Ummm. I missed something somewhere. The distros are all pretty much equal if you want them to be. But that's a technical perspective.
My concern is selling this to people who are NOT technical. Debian doesn't have the MIND SHARE that Red Hat does. And like it or not, that's a big part of my battle. It's hard enough to have people accept Linux. They've heard of Red Hat. IBM does Red Hat. Nobody has heard of Gentoo or Debian, at least not at the management level. Which is the level that technical installs are approved or vetoed at. I want my documentation to read "Install red Hat from cd. Select All packages. You're done" I do not want it to read. "Install <whatever flavor> download patches for X, Y, and Q. Apply them against the kernel. Run menuconfig, and choose this list of 175 options to compile into the kernel, and this list of 50 others to compile as modules. Compile the kernel. Compile the modules. Copy bzImage to /boot. Update LILO/GRUB. etc, etc, etc..." One sounds complete. One shounds like a patchwork of pieces that sort of work. *I* know otherwise, but you don't need to climb the food chain very far from <hands-on IT Admin title of choice> before this is a hopeless sale. Documentation should not exceed 2 pages per application. And if it strays more than 2 commands from "click next", the sale is going to fail. Kev. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Cade Cairns" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2002 11:48 AM Subject: Re: (clug-talk) <rant> > oops.. didnt mean to put that forth in a belittling way. sorry. > > Regards, > Cade Cairns > > On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, Cade Cairns wrote: > > > Of course. It's not like Debian is missing features that RedHat has.. I'm > > quite amused that you think that, though. > > > > Regards, > > Cade Cairns > > > > On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, Kevin Anderson wrote: > > > > > If I have a document to management that says something like "Then rebuild > > > the kernel, enabling extended attributes, etc" > > > > > > They'll ask "wouldn't XP be easier and faster?" > > > or > > > "Could you explain this to use so that we understand what is happening, and > > > why?" > > > or > > > "Does this mean that Red Hat 8 is unable to meet our needs?" > > > etc... > > > > > > > > > I chose Red Hat because management will have heard of it. It's way easier > > > to say "I need $100 to purchase a licensed copy of Red Hat" than to get > > > approval to "purchase a dozen pizza vouchers for Canberra's LUG". And with > > > me wanting to avoid the need to recompile the kernel, does Debian REALLY fit > > > this scenario well? If I'm going a non-Red Hat route, it'll be Gentoo. And > > > that seems more likely with every passing minute. The main reason I skipped > > > Gentoo before is that 1.2 doesn't seem to work with Compaq's SmartArray RAID > > > Controllers. I'd assume 1.4 does, but I'd also like to see it released > > > rather than running an RC version. > > > > > > Kev. > > > > > > > > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > > From: "timmy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2002 11:24 AM > > > Subject: Re: (clug-talk) <rant> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >And I don't want to rebuild the kernel, cause that sort of documentation > > > > >just blows. > > > > > > > > > > > > > I don't understand this statement. Which documentation are you referring > > > to? Do you need help with regards on how to compile a kernel from scratch? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
