Re: [tlug] What to do with RedHat

[Scott <scottro@example.com>]

On Sun, Nov 30, 2003 at 12:40:14AM +0900, Raymond Regalado wrote:


> You switched to Debian, though; is it a better 
> distro?
> 
> Thanks!

Actually, there was a thread about this not too long ago.  It might be
worth your while checking the archives.  I think it was just last month
(or maybe even this one).

In a nutshell, I'd say that many of the folks who have been using Linux
for awhile consider the later RH (and Fedora) a bit bloated and have
switched to Debian, Gentoo, one of the BSDs, and in one case, a
relatively obscure distro called ArchLinux, which has excellent package
management.

Advantages and disadvantages are highly subjective.  Debian can be
difficult to install and is usually a bit behind in versions of packages,
kernels, etc.  The tradeoff is that it's considered one of the most
stable Linux distributions around. 

Gentoo has become extremely popular.  They have excellent documentation,
making a non-trivial installation relatively easy.  With their increased
popularity, they now have binary versions of most things, so that the
installation doesn't take three days. (The basic Gentoo is all built
from source, so can take quite awhile to install). It too has an
excellent package management system, makes using Japanese quite easy and
is becoming more and more stable, as well as becoming one of those
distributions where things "just work."  Its biggest drawback is
probably the time it can take to install things, as everything is built
from source, and without a fast Internet connection, it becomes far less
easy to maintain.

Free and NetBSD can also be installed with a minimal amount of fluff,
then make it easy to add programs later, also of the latest version.
Like Gentoo, almost everything is built from source.  The 4.x version of
FreeBSD is highly tested (though I've been running 5.x without problems,
including two non mission critical production servers) and quite stable.
I want to say it's a bit easier than NetBSD, but that's just because I'm
more used to it.

Arch Linux installs a small base system.  It can then be updated with
binary packages, which are, so far, kept quite up to date. It has a far
smaller selection of packages than does say, Gentoo or Debian, due to
its relative newness and obscurity.  Its package management tool,
pacman, is excellent at dependency checking, and when there is a
problem, it's usually fixed in a couple of days. 

However, as most of its packages are downloaded from the Internet, it
also is more designed for a faster machine and Internet connection.

This is only scratching the surface.  Your best bet is to, as I said,
look at the archives for the recent distro discussions, see which ones
interest you, then go to their websites, look a bit more and see which
ones tickle your fancy.  There is also 
http://www.distrowatch.com which lists most of the distributions with
links to their pages.  

I haven't even mentioned Slackware here, another long time favorite,
also very stable, and in my mind fairly intuitive--one of the purest, so
to speak Linux distributions as it does everything quite logically.

HTH








-- 

Scott Robbins

PGP keyID EB3467D6
( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 D575 EB34 67D6 )
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6

Spike: I did a couple of slayers in my time. I don't like to 
brag. Who am I kidding? I love to brag. One time, during the 
Boxer Rebellion...

Attachment: pgp00009.pgp
Description: PGP signature