Hi Rajarshi,
You are partly right in saying that distros are often visibly
differentiated by different setup utils...for example....RPM for Red Hat,
dpkg for Debian (replaced by apt as the tool of choice in Debian 2.1), YAST
in case of SuSE...so on and so forth. But this is a more of a newbie's
(which I know you are not) view of the distros.
IIRC, during the early days of Linux development, it was decided that the
Linux developer community will work together to prevent a forking of the
Linux codebase, this is perhaps one of the major reasons of phenomenal
success of Linux (this issue of codebase forking I believe, continues to
bother the development of the free varieties of BSD Unices).
Despite the number of distros you get the same kernel....for example, the
kernel (lets say kernel is 2.0.36) on the machine of a Slackware user, a
SuSE user, a Caldera is built from the same source. However, this doesn't
mean that the packages you get with each distro will be exactly the same
(usually not the case). Incidentally, its Debian which is supposed to
bundle with the largest number of packages with its distribution ;)
Typically, each major distro uses its own packaging for the base system as
well as the other packages.....eg. .rpm for Red Hat, .deb for Debian and
the
simple .tgz for Slackware.
>From an user's point-of-view, Red Hat is suppposedly the most user-friendly
(idiot-friendly?) and easy to install distro, although I have heard quite a
good word for the latest SuSE. Debian is more targetted towards the
developer community. It is perhaps *THE* distro that is the strongest
supporter of the Open Souce movement, being developed entirely by team of
volunteers. Slackware is more suitable for people with a bit of
understanding of systems administration. Caldera, for example, was perhaps
one of the first commercial release of Linux, although they got beaten by
Red Hat in the number game.
About your question about the distributors compiling with different
settings...well, not exactly, although the different distros may (and does)
use different versions of libraries to produce the binaries. Today the
standard C Libraries being used is the glibc, but some distros (like
recently released Slackware 4.0) continue to use libc instead of glibc
(this is supposed to change with the forthcoming release of SW 4.1 which
will use glibc). Or take the example of StarOffice and Oracle under
Linux.....apparently they have used undocumented glibc calls, which are not
supported properly or by default in the latest distro of Red Hat...these
two package are known to break on upgrading to Red Hat 6.0 from 5.2 (there
are workaround fixes for these....as I do not use these packages and can't
say more about this with more authority). However, I suppose this gives you
an idea about why people say that tested under and garuanteed to work under
so-and-so distro).
Also the different distros are known to use different locations for placing
the config and othe files needed by the system. The ability of the setup
utils of different distros vary in the degree of support they provide to
the users while installing, in terms of auto-detection and configuration of
h/w devices/peripherals attached to the computer.
These I believe are some of the differences between differenrt
distros.....however, ultimately the real hallmark of each distribution is
its almost fanatic band of users......ILUG-Cal is in fact lucky to have
escaped a distro war till date. ;D Of course, the nay-sayers love to
proclaim that having different distros will ultimately lead to the
balkanisation of the Linux community, and that it will finally go the
FreeBSD way.
Despite all such prophesies and apprehensions, the writing on the wall
seems to be a different reality....a vibrant present and a great future to
look forward to.
HTH,
--Indra.
PS: Check out the following urls for the contents of the 2 CDs:
CD # 1 -->
http://www.linuxcentral.com/products/lccd/debian-2.1/files/i386-1.txt
CD # 2 -->
http://www.linuxcentral.com/products/lccd/debian-2.1/files/i386-2.txt
The usual rates for copying CDs in the city is around Rs. 150/-, but Inigo
(Ignatius) might do it for us at cost.
PPS. The "amigos" watched "PAYBACK" :)
ILUG-CAL -- Indian Linux User Group -- CALCUTTA Chapter
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GNU/Linux.....MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU
----------
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: ILUG-CAL <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: [ilug-cal] Debian Linux
> Date: Tuesday, June 22, 1999 9:29 PM
>
>
> Hi Indra,
> your mail regarding the Debian CD's you got reminded me about some
> questions I had.Firstly what makes up a different distribution?
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