On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 05:33:35PM +0200, Gal Goldschmidt wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I search for a dream distribution
> 
> Software:

Some notes regarding the list:

> 
> OO1.1
> Moz1.5+FB0.7 ( Support for Xprint)
> Xprint 

Every distro comes with xprint. It is a standard part of XFree. But You
mean the version of xprint from xprint.org.

I believe that mozilla without Xft support should be able to print
Heberw correctly even without xprint. As for the version with the Xft
support: does it work with xprint?

> Culmus
> Koffice 1.2.1
> KDE 1.3.4
> Pine

Has a license issue. Thus it is not exactly part of debian. I believe
that it is in a process of being dropped-of from other distros: Is it in
recent RedHats?

Mandrake comply with its license by changing the version name

> Latex+Hebrew

[ Mandrake has a relatively obsolete copy. Debian has a more recent
copy. I'm not sure about gentoo ]

> Lynx
> XEmacs/Emacs

Recent gnu emacs is supposed to be getting bidi support, right?

> Vim
> Xmms + mp3

Has a minor legal issue for any distro that wants to be available in the
US. 

> Xpdf
> gv
> Kdevelop
> Eclipse

Actually now Ecipse should be able to be built with gcj and thus not
require a non-free jvm, right?

> All the POSIX utils

[ Try busybox. Will get you about a half... ]

> No ADware.
> 

Can anybody comment on the adware in Mandrake? (unless someone already
has and I missed it somehow)


> Management: 
> APT based, so I can upgrade just about everything but the kernel, on-line.
> Never have to reinstall/upgrade the OS offline.

Mandrake has urpmi, which has most of apt's functionality. It seems to
lack some of the finer-grain control features of apt, but it basically
works, and it more mature than apt-rpm.

> 
> 1. RH and Mandrake have this annoying "upgrade every year or no security 
> updates" policy.
> Also upgrading from one version to another is a ceremony of taking the machine

With RedHat this seems to be: "a release cycle of 4-6 monthes. Errata
release up until 2-3 monthes after the next distor's release.", right?

Mandrake: 18 monthes.

> down for a few hours.
> I can't blame them, they need some way to make us upgrade and buy the new 
> version.
> 
> 2. Debian is close, but Woody is very old and no Hebrew support.

It has Hebrew latex, at least...

You can also easily find good sources of recent KDE for woody. And
probably gnome as well.

> Unstable is well... unstable, the kde is broken because of a broken 
> libsensors.
> It seem to work, it has problems and it's a moving target, keeping a secure 
> and stable machine with it is not easy.
> 
> 3. The closest thing I got is Gentoo, 

if you rule out debian testing or unstable, you should try Mandrake. It
seems to have almost anything you need, except , maybe the most recent
version of mozilla. The version of OO may need some upgrade (Diego: are
those bugs indfeed due to the use of rc4?).

And you can't expect a stable distro to be on the edge. You'll have to
get secuirty errata, and you wouldn't want to need to rebuild half your
system for installing a security patch. Mandrake currently is the most
recently-released, and thus has an edge here.

(at least if your CD isn't LG...)

If you like bleeding edge, then try the one supplied by each distro.

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen                       +---------------------------+
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir/ |vim is a mutt's best friend|
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]       +---------------------------+

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