Re: [tlug] Mandrake vs. Red Hat

[Matt Doughty <mdoughty@example.com>]

On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 10:49:13PM -0400, Josh Glover wrote:
> 
> Yeah, and my flame thrower don't work so well anymore.

Heh, time to go shopping then. Life isn't complete without a good
flame thrower.

> 
> >>Come on, "everything else is better"!? Care to quantify or qualify that 
> >>statement in some way?
> 
> Och, that bit of prose came back to bite me!
> 
> > Ok. I was mostly just abusing hyberbole, but since you asked I will try
> > qualify. I judge distros on two major points:
> > 
> > 1. package system: It should be trivial to add and remove software for
> > 2. visibility of the system: in other words can I easily see how the
> 
> Those are pretty good criteria. I had not thought about it much, but 
> that is more or less the same way *I* judge a system.
> 
> I think the reason that we disagree is that I started out on Redhat, and 
> am pretty used to how things are laid out. Thus, I am less offended when 
> something is not "where it should be" according to the Way of Unix.
> 
> However, when I moved into Solaris and some other Linux distros, I did 
> not have much trouble getting settled in, so I don't think Redhat has 
> forced me into complacancy! ;)

Heh, unfortunately for most other systems I compare them against NetBSD
these days, and when you compare a clean system to the needlessly 
complicated /etc's you see on alot of distros it is offensive because
you know it could be much cleaner.

> 
> > I love gentoo though it still needs to work out a few issues. I really
> > need to find the time to push through a configurable prefix for protage.
> > Still as much as I love gentoo I would hesitate to put it on a server.
> 
> Why not? (I am just curious, not trying to say you are wrong.)
> 
> I actually *prefer* Gentoo on my servers because I don't install X (and 
> have to go through all the configuring that it entails), and I trust it 
> a bit more.

Its really a matter of maturity. Gentoo is changing at a very rapid pace,
and there isn't an equivelent to stable. I like its install and I do prefer
to do everything by hand, but I will let things settle down a bit before
I would want to put it on a server.  Besides, I prefer NetBSD for my 
servers (see Chris your brainwashing is complete). ;)
 
> 
> > Yes, you can config RH from the command line.  The problem is they have
> > munged up etc a bit to make there tools work. I'm obviously exagerating
> > but I can't recommend a distro that makes thing more difficult to follow
> > in the name of gui config tools.
> 
> How about Mandrake (which Jim Breen is rumoured to have done some work on)?
> 

Never tried Mandrake and I have seen enough comments to convince me I 
shouldn't waste my time.

--Matt