Re: [tlug] Looking for a distribution to replace Ubuntu

["Johan Berntsson" <johan@example.com>]

On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 11:13 AM, Curt Sampson
<cjs@example.com> wrote:
> Ubuntu has a fair number of annoyances for me, as folks are probably
> gathering from my posts here. It's finally got enough stuff wrong that
> can't be fixed as easily as installing a new window manager package that
> I'm looking for a new distribution. I'd like to solicit suggustions.

You might want to take a look at SUSE. All networking is off by
default, and you will have to enable the services you wish to use
manually. It is also up to date, well maintained, and has lots of
well-integrated binaries. The control panel tools are better than
Ubuntu's as well. I use SUSE for commercial installations.

Johan


>
> Here are my criteria, in approximate order of importance.
>
> * Support for "full-disk encryption," or as close as Linux gets (which I
> guess is an unencrypted boot partition), and an enter-passphrase-on-boot
> system usable by a non-sysadmin.
>
> * A working DNSSEC resolver, preferably using the BIND 9 library. This
> should be used by the standard OpenSSH package to use authenticated
> SSHFP records.
>
> * All network-facing services off by default. Well, within reason:
> disabling ICMP echo replies would be a PITA. But installing an Apache
> httpd package should certainly not start a server. Ideally, too,
> services are configured securely by default, e.g., sshd is configured to
> disallow all root logins over the network and password logins for any
> account.
>
> * Good driver support for desktop systems, particularly in the ability
> to use modern graphics cards to some basic level of performance. I can
> live with Aqua-style stuff being slow and not being able to run games,
> but I do need a basic 2-D window manager and programs such as Firefox
> to work well, and I need multiple-head support. ACPI suspend and power
> management working well would be a good bonus.
>
> * A reasonably broad range of binary packages available, and having the
> latest production-ready releases available sooner, rather than later.
> Automatic updates and all that, too. A fairly coarse package granularity
> is fine; I have little concern about how much disk space the system
> uses.
>
> * Some reasonable default configuration for window manager and so on
> that office staff comfortable with Windows and the Gnome environment
> will be comfortable with, and a set of graphical system management tools
> that enable these folks to, e.g., easily find and install programs such
> as the Gimp.
>
> * Including include files and any other basic tools one needs to compile
> against a library with the library itself, rather than as a separate
> "dev" package. I don't mind if they want to put the profiling libraries
> and suchlike in a separate package, though I'd prefer they do not.
>
> If I can find a good candidate, we'd like to replace Ubuntu on all of
> the desktops at our office, and on several notebooks.
>
> cjs
> --
> Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974
> Mobile sites and software consulting: http://www.starling-software.com
>
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