Eli, I personally think it is a great idea, as long as we make sure it
does not escalate into a full-scale holy war. I think distribution
experiences and stories are a good thing to dedicate a meeting or two for
once in a while.
Personally, I have worked mainly with Mandrake lately, and as a general
rule I'm very happy with it. I think it would make a very good distro for
beginners, bringing them all the power of Linux (no stupidifying it) while
still behaving consistently and easily. The users would require an initial
acquaintance and setting up of hardware, glitches, etc, but after that
they can work on it without problems.
As for experts, this is a different issue. Mandrake made sure all the
packages in the system work together as one, so they many times use
unorthodox methods of configuring them, and it takes time to find out how
everything is handled and where. Maybe the problem exists in other distros
as well, but I did not try them. I found myself compiling many RPMs from
source because I wanted the newer version. (maybe urpmi-sources would
work). Sometimes I resorted to ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apps/myapp.
I still think it is suitable for experts, but maybe "gurus" like me who
like to install very new or bleeding edge software can find a better
alternative. But then again, I'm not sure any distro I heard about has a
perfect package management system.
The many GUI tools that are included in Mandrake (usually new versions or
even bleeding-edge) are very nice, and the selection of package is good. I
am an RPM hacker (thanks in part to Tzafrir's lecture), and many time
prepare or modify RPM Specs, or temper with them just to make sure I can
later uninstall or upgrade with ease. I don't expect most users to know
how to do that, but then again, I can expect most users to either not need
it anyway, or to be able to compile with ./configure-make-make install.
Did not have too much experience with other distros lately, and I have
found the versions of RedHat that we have on the farm, S.u.s.e (also quite
old), and FreeBSD (%-)) painful to use. I now how to adhere to POSIX
standards, but I have some configurations that fit me much nicer than
others.
Note that, I have my opinions on various decisions the various distros
vendors did, and not always agree with them. Mandrake seems to be mostly
OK, except for mis-configurations of various packages, which I can usually
resolve. I would recommend Mandrake for people who only worked with RedHat
so far. I don't know if people who fill at home with Debian or Gentoo will
find it equally as appealing, but then again, I did not have too much
experience with them. (albeit may try Gentoo in the future - does anybody
know if I can stop the bootstrap compilation of the system and resume it?
I'd hate to make the computer occupied by it for several good hours. And
I usually don't like long compilations. Mozilla takes overnight to
compile on my workstation.)
But I suppose discussing such stuff interactively face-to-face would have
a better effect. I'd be happy to hear other people's experiences. I think
non-orthodox lectures are good for the club, as they are a fresh breath of
air.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Home Page: http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
He who re-invents the wheel, understands much better how a wheel works.
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