Muli Ben-Yehuda
Mon, 04 Nov 2002 02:45:27 -0800
On Mon, Nov 04, 2002 at 12:24:08PM +0200, Eli Billauer wrote: > Hello Muli. > > > I, on the other hand, think it's a foolish idea. > > And what does it say about the idea's originator? ;) Nothing at all. Even Feinman had a foolish idea or two ;-) > > It's the mechanisms, the standards, the code, not the policy > > - this distribution makes everything convenient for users, and that > > one compiles everything from scratch. Who cares? > > I do. I care what "paranoid mode" means during the installation. I > care how the non-Linux partitions are going to be handled. I care > about if the packages are consistent. I care if I'm going to need to > run after a zillion RPMs every time I want to upgrade something, > because it needs to be upgraded. So you care about the installation procedure, and about the package management interface. Neither are things you do everyday, or even often. > I care if the C compiler I get with the distribution is buggy (as > with Mandrake 7.0). I don't - installing a new gcc is not too hard. > > No matter which distribution I run, they all do the same things. > > That's where we strictly disagree. Even you, as a kernel hacker, > wants to know what kernel you get in the package, don't you? Actually, NO. The tools I use daily (gcc, xemacs, the kernel sources) I always download and compile myself. I only care that the distro gives me a usable desktop and a usable xterm clone. > And here we have the ultimate point: What YOU do with it. Others > keep Linux as a tool, not as the thing itself. And for people like > me, setting up the system, even if it's fun, is not something that > we want to spend too much time on. So why devote a lecture to it? ;-) > Meaning: I want my system as I like it from the beginning. A wise > choice of distro might help. I agree on this point. > And if we don't want to discuss desktop themes, well there are > plently of other things we've agreed not to waste time on (vi/emacs > comes to my mind). > > Still a foolish idea? After having discussed it with Orna, I agree there's room for an overview of contemporary distributions, each with its strengths and weaknesses, and the differences between them, especially for people who don't know which distro to choose. I still maintain that to an epsilon, which distro you use is irrelevant, unless you have very specific needs. If we continue to discuss this subject, my only request is that people do their homework before- all too often, we have a tendency to repeat something we've heard from someone, which might've been true 7 revisions ago but is no longer correct, and is still being presented as "the truth". -- Muli Ben-Yehuda http://www.mulix.org/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ sctrace strace /bin/foo http://syscalltrack.sf.net/ Quis custodes ipsos custodiet? http://www.mulix.org/cv.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]