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Jaco Swart is on permanent record as saying: : :So I'm just wondering: is it worthwhile to stay with RH7.3, or should I=20 :go on to more recent distributions? If so, which one, and why? Opening= =20 :a beehive here :-) Beehive is right. Distros and religion, dangerous territory. I hail from the Debian camp, but I set my sister up with Mandrake (and still stand by that decision, although it's been ages sinc looked into suse) Around here, you'll generally see two vocal camps: drake and gentoo. There seems to be a fairly decent base of debian (partly thanks to Knoppix), but we're a less vocal bunch around here. Choose your distro based on what you want out of the system. Gentoo is a great learning experience, but it favours those with a good connection and quick compiles. Drake and suse are very much packaged user systems. Red hat is moving into the business market. (my keyboard seems to be dropping keystrokes. Apologies for spelling). Debian is still a bit of an odd one. It used to be the geek's own distro, but gentoo has been picking up a lot of that, but the community still embodies the spirit. What Debian brings to the table: -damn good package management. -a solid policy regarding system design. -(a wee bit of snootiness) on the downside: -debian releases (official ones) are _slow_ -policies can get in the way of functionality. If you look in the changelog for the kernel, you'll see a list of non-free things removed. what keeps me with Debian: -I like the community spirit. I send in my bug reports and occassional patches, and try to be a good little citizen. -I like most of the policies. A lot of people have put together great formulas for working system, and how to keep it as stable and safe as possible. -I've been using it for years, and I'm quite familiar with the layout and the tools. I could alias "apt-cache search", but my fingers know the motions. what keeps me from running off to Gentoo: -apt-src/deb-src. I can compile what interests me, and get the same sort of opimisation that gentoo-ers rave about (useful, since x86 debian packages compiled for i386) why I originally shifted from Slackware to Debian: -I didn't have time to keep up with maintenance. I was generally opposed to package management at the time (because I didn't understand enough about how to use is properly), but I just couldn't keep everything properly updated. I was hit by a wu-ftp exploit and needed to start again. I chose Debian because it was the best of the package management options. All that said, each distro is a resource. Regardless of what you install, you can make use of any of the tools. Look at alien for cross-distro packaging, or apt for rpm. Even better, look at the documentation at each of the sites. Especially the docs at Linux From Scratch (www.linuxfromscratch.org) The appendix of the documentation is a worthy entry in the bookmarks of anyone trying to figure this whole thing out. Now to answer your questions. ;) You are probably better off with a more recent distribution if you have the opportunity to switch up. Things change over time, and even good choices can be superceded. Your choice of distro is not ours to make. We can share opinions and experiences, but that's about it. =20 I hope that makes sense. Don't fall into a distro just because it's got loud supporters. It's still just a tool. Get what you want out of it. (And with that, I head out of country for a few days and let mail pile up. Be gentle...) Greg --- - --qxfKREH7IwbezJ+T Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/MNycGRGKEmkMxe4RAvlVAJ9UWS5sijyaQUUJaaOnWhXSpbZPIQCfR/dt xtLA/yJceLiNZwDdJnQ15eY= =qUw3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --qxfKREH7IwbezJ+T--
