On Tue, Feb 20, 2007 at 12:35:21PM -0500, Mark Post wrote: > I agree with the RHEL/SLES part of your comment, but Debian and Slack/390? > That's certainly news to me.
Adam is right about Debian; I plan to stay well away from it, for non-technical reasons. I've always avoided Slackware because it seemed to me to be much like trying to run MVS without using SMP/E. I consider an integrated package management system to be mandatory. I want to install a bare OS (kernel, libc, binutils) plus the absolute minimum prerequisites needed to run Apache 2, Postfix, mutt, slrn, inn, CVS server, sshd, and MoinMoin (or some other wiki; that one's still up in the air). If it's not needed for that, it doesn't get installed, period. In particular, I don't want any form of GUI, and therefore don't want any part of X on my system. If it's not installed on the system, it can't be cracked. Getting there with RHEL, SLES, or Debian is a pain. Getting there with Slackware is probably doable, but the revulsion of the Slackware community toward any sort of real package management (one thing Red Hat and Debian get right) leaves me cold. That's why I like Gentoo: you start by installing an absolute minimum system and then only add in packages that you need, plus their prerequisites, and it's all done automatically and manageably. Yes, Gentoo/s390 on Hercules will take forever to install, and I'm not looking forward to that. It's something I only have to do once, though. I'm inclined to stick with Linux, just because it's the devil I know. I own IRIX and HP-UX and Solaris and AIX systems, and could get back up to speed on any of them enough to use them for the purpose, but we come back to the bare-bones approach: I know even less about ripping unused software out by the roots there than I do on Linux. I also know less about managing software updates as security holes are discovered. Linux on other architectures than x86/x86_64, Itanium, and the mainframe don't give me warm fuzzy feelings as to their longevity, as they don't have the same wide support or committed support from the manufacturer. Finally, there's another consideration for the Hercules site, in particular, that doesn't apply much to other folks: it's called "eating your own dog food". I think it'd be really good if I could say "this site hosted on Hercules" on hercules-390.org. That's a "nice to have", though. -- Jay Maynard, K5ZC http://www.conmicro.cx http://jmaynard.livejournal.com http://www.tronguy.net http://www.hercules-390.org (Yes, that's me!) Buy Hercules stuff at http://www.cafepress.com/hercules-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
