Re: [PLUG] "Distro" advocates

[Jason Costomiris <jcostom@jasons.org>]

On Thu, May 25, 2000 at 10:44:10AM -0400, Trevor J Martin wrote:
: My question is : What would be the best distribution of linux to throw
: on this box?

I've used most of the mainstream distributions at one time or another.
Here's my take:

Debian:	Rock solid stability.  As a package management tool, I prefer
		dpkg to rpm.  dpkg offers more flexibility, such as diversions,
		and of course the whole integration with apt thing too.  The 
		distro is the most stable I've seen.  The problem is that with
		that stability comes rigidity.  While Debian was the first
		distro to ship kernel 2.0, they've fallen WAY behind with their
		releases.  Debian has not yet shipped a release containing 
		glibc 2.1 or higher.  2.1.3 is in the "frozen" distribution,
		which will ship some day, but no releases with a recent glibc.

RedHat:	Feature packed, sometimes to its peril (ref: the RH 6.0 GNOME/E 
		setup).  As a package tool, rpm is good, but lacks some of the 
		refinements that dpkg offers (and who can't use a few refinements?).
		Package versions tend to be more "bleeding edge" than Debian.

Mandrake:	RedHat, with even more bleeding edge stuff.  They've finally
		started to diverge from RedHat, with the 7.0 and 7.1 releases,
		which sport a nifty Qt-based installer.  Very KDE friendly, but
		not unfriendly to GNOME.  Uses RPM for package management.

Slackware:	It's gotten better since Pat Volkerding started paying 
		attention to what's going on again.  For a LONG time, this distro
		lagged behind.  No serious package management to speak of here.
		IMHO, it's a nightmare to maintain stable Slackware systems, 
		especially when you've got more than one system to maintain.
		With RedHat, Debian, Mandrake, Caldera, SuSE or Corel, I've got 
		a reasonable package management system that keeps my machines
		consistent.

Caldera:	Puke.  I hate it.  It feels like a bunch of Novell guys 
		created a Linux distro.  Oh wait, they did. :)  Everything about
		how it works annoyed me.  When I installed OpenLinux 2.2, widely
		heralded as "wonderful", it insisted on inserting every kernel
		module under the sun, and I had a heck of a time making that
		stop.

SuSE:	Almost feels like RedHat, but ickier.  YaST (their system management
		tool), annoys me endlessly.  Good package management (RPM based).

My recommendation?  RedHat 6.2.  Very stable, very up to date, good, but
not amazingly good package management system.  Lots of hardware support,
even for my emu10k1 based PCI sound card (sb live!).

-- 
Jason Costomiris <><           |  Technologist, geek, human.
jcostom {at} jasons {dot} org  |  http://www.jasons.org/ 

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