"The following sentence is totally identical with this one, except that the
words 'following' and 'preceding' have been exchanged, as have the words
'except' and 'in', and the phrases 'identical with' and 'different from'.
"The preceding sentence is totally different from this one, in that the
words 'preceding' and 'following' have been exchanged, as have the words
'in' and 'except', and the phrases 'different from' and 'identical with'."
-- Scott Kim and Douglas Hofstaedter,
in Hofstaedter's _Metamagical Themas_
The question below, and the answers it received, reminded me of the above.
With Linux distributions, "similar" versus "different" is somewhat in the
eye of the beholder.
As regards Slackware and Red Hat, they do share many similarities (as do
Debian, S.u.S.E. ... really, all major Linux distributions). Both provide
the same basic kernel, the same (GNU and other) packages, similar X11
implementations, and support for the same general set of hardware. So the
command-line apps, the programming languages, the X servers and apps, and
kernel modules will vary only slightly, and much of this variation will
result from one having issued a new release more recently than the other.
That said, there are important differences too. The main ones I know are:
-- Red Hat uses .rpm packages, while Slackware provides its
packages as gzip'd tar files.
-- each has a different setup system. Aside from a slew of
technical differences, Slackware requires a bit more
hands-on work during setup; it figures out less for
you than Red Hat does.
-- they use different approaches to system initialization files
(the files in the rc.d directory). The differences can be
quite confusing when moving from one to the other.
-- they use different "getty" programs. (This is the program that
watches for a login attempt on a device.) Slackware
still uses agetty; Red Hat offers both mgetty and
getty_ps (I think).
-- the shared libraries they provide can vary too, and this
is important when adding in packages not included with
the distribution. (Many questions on this list are about
mismatches between apps and shared libraries.)
-- one of the disks in the Red Hat set contains packages not
distributed under GPL or an equivalent. These packages
are not included with Slackware. I don't know if the
Slackware "contrib" sections and the sunsite/mit archives
mirrored on the CDs include apps not on the Red Hat
disk set.
I use Slackware myself, and while it is a bit rougher around the edges than
Red Hat, the only real problem I've had with it is its tendency to mess up
swap setup. I always have to fix this by hand after doing a new install. I
understand that RH has its problems too, though, so the choice between them
isn't clear cut to my eye.
At 12:54 PM 12/28/98 -0800, Charles Buchanan wrote:
>Since a couple of people have mentioned/suggested that I try Slakware
>instead Red Hat, I have ordered Slakware and it should be here in a few days
>or so. My question is, Is there a huge difference in commands for the
>different flavors of linux?
[deleted]
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
762 Garland Drive
Palo Alto, CA 94303-3603
650.321.3561 voice 650.322.1209 fax [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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