On Tuesday 02 March 2004 23:13, Kevin Anderson wrote: > If you have Gentoo, why bother with the rest... :) > > I'd say Suse, Debian and (unfortunately, Red Hat/Fedora). round out the > list. >
First off ... it is not unfortunate that Fedora / Red Hat is a major distribution. I was using Red Hat when Mandrake became a distibution and when the first SuSE distribution was released. I believe that the early success of distributions like Red Hat made it possible for the acceptance of others. They are a major distribution, and rightfully so. (I guess Alan Cox likes to work for an "unfortunate company") > I'd give the nod to Fedora as a best first install, because it's the > easiest to find dead tree documentation for. (book stores, etc) It's also > the most supported for closed source apps. > I would think that any distribution is a good starting point. You may have some problems with your first choice, and you may not. It's hard to say. It all depends on a persons individual level of competance, and understanding. It depends on what someone is looking to get out of the deal. Choosing a linux distro is like an ice cream shop. Pick a flavour. You like the green one ... then go green. You say you've never had green before? Some people may be expecting lime sherbert, and it turns out to be avacado ice cream. Well ... pick the chocolate one next time! ;-) <after the fact> I just read through the rest of this thread, and someone else mentioned the ice cream analogy too. Is there something about ice cream and linux I missed? hmmmmmmm ... Baskin Robbins 9.0 </> And whichever choice is made ... there is a plethera of documentation available for any installation. On the web, in books, magazines, word of mouth. OpenBSD has installation instructions on the CD liner notes for example. Docs are very easy to find for installations. > SuSE would be my recommendation for a second install, because the sooner > you're off Red Hat, the better. SuSE is a close second for docs and Closed > source app support, and with Novell promoting it, I expect this gap will > close fast. Install isn't quite as easy as RH, but once it's working, it's > easy too. > I disagree ... I had a horrid time with SuSE. I support their cause, and I support their distribution as a choice. I recommend using SuSE to several people actually. I however have not had good experiences with it, and I prefer to use Fedora. I could say the same for Debian. I am not about to start a which distro is king war. I know several others disagree with me ... and that's fine. That's fantastic actually. I have the choice ... and so does everyone else. I admin servers with other colleagues. Some like SuSE, or Mandrake. If I was installing the machine it would not be my choice. Do I really have a bone to pick if SuSe, or Mandrake is installed ... well no. They'd all run a linux kernel right? They'd all have the same software available (like apache, postfix, PHP, postgres, bind, CVS, etc.) right? Actually Aaron and I both use a RH6.2 box, as CVS and DNS. Is it a big deal? ... not to me. He mentioned upgrading the box an installing SuSE on it. Again not a big deal. It's granny smith vs. golden delicious. Both still apples. > Debian is popular, and well documented on-line, but it's a PITA to install. > It's worth knowing a bit about simply because it's a common reference > platform, though this is waning fast. > > Gentoo is where you should go after Suse. It's faster than any of the > others, it's lighter, and I find it much easier to maintain. It's not > nearly as hard to install as Debian, but it's certainly not as easy as Suse > or Fedora. Gentoo is also used for some interesting projects (Hardened > Gentoo, for example). The only thing it doesn't have going for it is (and > Personally, I don't care, but others do, I know...) LSB compliance. I think the bottom line is that there is no correct path to take. The distro debate will go on forever. There is no right answer, and I would be discouraged to see people choose SuSE, or Fedora, Gentoo, Mandrake, Slackware, Debian or any other operating system just because someone else, somewhere, said so. I am all for every choice available, I also support people making up their own minds as to the choices. Expand your knowledge everyone. Learn some history, learn some present, and make informed choices. Andy P.S. Although I've never used it .... I do hear really good things about Gentoo. Just thought I'd throw that out there. :-) A~ _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
