On Fri, 24 May 2002 13:00:27 -0700, Matthew Stapleton wrote: > > I have tried several of the major distributions on my PC over the years. > But I am by no means an expert at using UNIX/Linux. I want some advice > on the pros and cons of the various distributions. Possibly any replies > to this could be aimed at Redhat, Slackware, Debian, SUSE, Mandrake etc > as many of the others are based on these. > I landed on SuSE and really haven't been satisfied with the other distributions I've occasionally had to deal with. I have found it far and away the most stable, well put together distribution out there.
Red Hat, TurboLinux, and Caldera are really buggy. My experience with Slackware was that it was simply too primitive. It probably has improved since, but when I tried it, you had to build too much software to get the system into a usable state. Some of the required builds had booby traps that made it even more difficult. I never did get Netscape running on that version. Does Slackware use glibc yet? Debian's package management system (and philosophy) make it a winner for many. However, I feel that every argument you can come up with in favor of Debian's package management is better answered with the FreeBSD ports collection. Debian's installation is notoriously difficult. Even Debian stable isn't reliable enough for my taste. In a subsequent post, you say you want to learn the nuts and bolts. This is good, but is really not dependent on the distribution you choose. Most distributions install with a default to come up in GUI mode, but you can modify /etc/inittab, changing the default run level to come up in text mode. You can then use the startx command to bring up X whenever you need the GUI. The final argument for SuSE, I believe, is that of all the major distributions, SuSE comes closest to the File Hierarchy Standard. All the distributions are moving in that direction, so for learning purposes, SuSE may offer you a bit of a head start. -- David Benfell, LCP [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Resume available at http://www.parts-unknown.org/resume.html
msg00966/pgp00000.pgp
Description: PGP signature
