A resend of one that didn't go through...
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 08:07:28 -0500 (EST) From: Steve <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Linuxii ? and SuSE On Sun, 10 Feb 2002, Tony Butka wrote: > I installed 6.1. SuSE had a pretty nice install script, GUI and all, but it was >definitely not > trivial if you didn't know all about your hardware :-). Automatic hardware detection is relatively new in the Linux world. They are getting better at it all the time. Even to the point now that Linux installs are even beating out Win installs in this area. > Probably the newer versions are > simpler to install. Mandrake 7.1 (which is my main Linux os) was seriously painless >-- > inf fact easier than NT4.0 on a couple of systems. It's functionally the same as >Red Hat > --uses RPM files to keep track of everything. There are two main differences between Mandrake 7.1 and Red Hat 6.2 (which are roughly contemporary in spite of the version discrepancies). The first is that the storebought Man7.1 is compiled to run on 586 class machine. If you happen to be running a 486, or even a 386, Mandrake 7.1 will be useless to you. Red Hat is compiled for 386, so will run on anything. The second difference is that Man7.1 requires you to have 1 GB of hard drive space, and it all needs to be on the same partition. I tried to install it on a machine that had 2GB free which was spread out over 3 partitions. Mandrake refused to install. Red Hat 6.2 easily installed in the same space Mandrake wouldn't. Oh, yeah, there's a third... Mandrake 7.1 says it requires a minimum 32MB of RAM... I don't know that Red Hat even specifies at all. I have Red Hat 6.2 installed on a ~400MB drive in a 486VLB-66 with 20MB RAM. I doubt I could even get the Mandrake install script to boot on this machine... so while Mandrake may have originally been based on Red Hat, it's certainly not "functionally the same." > Of course, the second you drop down under that nice XWindows GUI of your choice, > you are deep in the heart of 'nix. ... but if you can't get it installed in the first place, you never get that option. ;-) (oh yeah, you can install Red Hat without X if you choose. I don't think Mandrake would allow that either) - Steve
