On Sat, 7 Apr 2001, Alexander Skwar wrote:
> So sprach Vadim Plessky am Sat, Apr 07, 2001 at 03:33:43PM +0000:
> > -- they are very happy with YaST install
>
> Hmm, since SuSE 7.1 is not freely available I cannot test it. So I stick to
> my ancient knowledge of SuSE 5.3 - and this is, SuSE sucks.
AFAICS, SuSE 7.1 has come available last week, you can do an ftp install
from ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/7.1/i386.de/ .
I know many people who like YaST because it allows you to install, configure
and update the system in a single application without ever editing a config
file or entering a command on the shell. Of course that is irrelevant for
expert users and I always disliked that it makes a lot harder to understand
what is going on and to exploit the power of tools like rpm.
> > -- they like configurability, number of options, etc. in SuSE
>
> Uhm, I don't understand this. Is it better than with Mandrake tools? How
> about Webmin - does it support SuSE? Webmin is a very important tool for
> me.
The point of their configuration system is that everything is kept in
a single config file -- rc.config. It is different from what everybody
else does, but it has some nice aspects especially for beginners.
I don't know anyone using webmin with SuSE. My guess is that it would
work alright, but would completely break at the moment that YaST or
SuSEConfig is called, which would regenerate some files in /etc from
/etc/rc.config.
If webmin is required, that would be a good argument against SuSE. The
same goes probably for linuxconf and everything else that accesses
config files and does not come with suse.
> > -- *I* could not find SRPMs even for released long time ago versions (6.4,
> > 6.3) Thanks Arnd Bergmann for the link - but it's rather difficult to find
> > such link yourslef. Haven't tested this link, though.
>
> Hmm, bad, yes.
As with everything, it's difficult do find only if you have not used it a lot.
For some reason, they are using dos-compatible filenames, so e.g.
kdebase-2.0.1-3.src.rpm would become kdebase.spm. The source rpms are
located in a directory called zq1, which also seems completely logical
to most SuSE users ;-)
I did not have any trouble finding the srpms for 5.3, 6.3, 6.4, 7.0 and 7.1,
although they may not be as widely spread as other distros.
>
> Okay, I now have some quite good arguments for Mandrake vs. SuSE. How about
> Mandrake vs. RedHat? I don't think this is going to be that easy. How many
> *SUPPORT* contracts/contractors are available for Mandrake, and how many for
> RedHat? And which are avaiable?
>
If it will be Mandrake 8.0 vs. Red Hat 7.0, the better argument is probably
the versions of the relevant packages, e.g. kernel-2.2.16 and kde-1.1.2
are hardly what I would use for a fresh install. That will of course change
with RH7.1, but they can only ask you for an evaluation for the time of
the installation.
Arnd <><
