On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 7:28 PM, Miles Fidelman <mfidel...@meetinghouse.net>wrote:
A newbie to ANY o/s is going to need some help with installation, > configuration, software selection/installation/**configuration, general > use, etc. > > That help has to come from somewhere - either paid, or from a community (or > both). > > So, your choices come down to: > - a commercial distribution that has good support (which may cost extra), > or, > - paying somebody for support, or, > - a distribution that has good documentation and a strong, supportive > community > > Having said that, there are a few other questions: > > - ease of software installation (IMHO apt makes things easier than any > other packaging system out there) > > - need for current versions of specific software packages (at least for > some of the packages I rely on, the packaged versions tend to lag well > behind the upstream versions, and I end up installing a lot of stuff from > the upstream tarball) - depending on your specific software needs, Ubuntu > might be a better choice (though if you plan to explore virtualization, then > it's a real contest between Debian, Red Hat, and Suse) > > > - level of technical expertise - if you're coming from Windows or a Mac, > with no serious expertise that's one thing; if you've administered a Solaris > or AIX server that's another - if you have deep experience with a non-Linux > o/s, then it comes down to WHY you want to install Linux: > - if it's to run software, then it really comes back to availability of > software and ease of administration (and really comes down to Debian, > Ubuntu, Suse/OpenSuse, Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS for serious use) > - if it's to learn and explore, then Debian is great, but there are also > Gentoo, Linux-from-Scratch (for real, in-depth learning), and one might also > consider exploring the BSD family of stuff > > Of course, this is all one person's opinion - based on: > - running headless servers > - having run Solaris, then Red Hat, then settling on Debian > --- generally running Old Stable until Stable has been out for a year > (partially conservatism, partially lazyness) > ----- currently running Lenny as Xen Dom0s and for production, Squeeze on a > couple of development VMs > --- installing a lot of stuff from upstream tarballs (notably list > management and database stuff) > - periodically looking at Suse, every time I find yet another nit with Xen > - periodically looking at Red Hat for a deployment platform (we do some R&D > for Red Hat based customers) > - occasionally considering either Gentoo or building a custom distribution > from scratch > - periodically eying FreeBSD and NetBSD - for lots of reasons > - throwing up my hands in despair every time I look at the state of > OpenSolaris > - running Mac OSX on my laptop - because who needs headaches when writing > documents, preparing briefing slides, reading email, and surfing the web - > and I can run Windows stuff under Parallels, and open a terminal or X- > window and drop into a BSD development environment (don't need to worry > about Linux, since I've got other boxes for that, and there's always > Parallels) > Good explanation. Thx.
