We are doing an experiment here with SuSE 10.0 Novell Evaluation Version, which is available on the www.OpenSuSE.org website. I believe OpenSuse only has open source software, whereas this has some other nice closed source software.
We are planning to replace almost all of our Windows workstations with LTSP workstations. I'm getting worn out trying to maintain a bunch of Windows workstations, when LTSP should allow me to just maintain one server for all of them. I've worked with Corel Linux (Debian based), most of the RedHat versions since 6.2, Fedora 2 (briefly), 4 and 5. Lineox 4 and Centos 4.3 - both RHEL 4 rebuilds. Slackware 9, 10, and 10.1. Suse 9, 10, 10.1. And a few others briefly. SuSE, I think without question, makes the nicest workstation of any of the distros that I have tried. I have heard many people say that they would never use it on a server, and I might tend to agree with that for a "normal" server. However - and please correct me if I am wrong here - really - while an LTSP server does have all of the characteristics of a normal server, it also needs to offer all the amenities of a nice workstation. Part of why I chose SuSE for our project is because we have very demanding users, and they can be very fickle, to say the least. The success or failure of our LTSP project depends largely on how easy it is for them use the new workstations, and to adjust to. And things on SuSE generally "just seem to work." I'm the only "technical guy" here, so if anything ever happens to me, they need to be able to find someone who can maintain it. SuSE's YAST2 configuration utility makes that a lot easier. For a "normal" server, it can be a pain in the neck, though. I like to set up my own configuration files the way I like them, and sometimes things just plain don't work on SuSE if you don't use YAST2, at least initially. And I haven't used SuSE enough yet to figure out what all is going on behind the scenes with YAST2. ---- Here are some thoughts about the other distros that I've tried: I've never really liked Red Hat, or any of it's rebuilds, even though I have used it more than anything else. It is slow to boot, it seems to run slower on all of the machines I have used it on, and just in general, it does not live up to its implied claim to be the standard to achieve. However, if you are having problems with something on it, it is probably one of the easiest distros to find help for just by searching google because there are so many Red Hat users. If you are considering Red Hat, I would recommend going with a Lineox or CentOS RHEL4 rebuild over Fedora. The RHEL4 rebuilds are a little older, and because of that it can be hard to find updated packages for them. Fedora 4 packages will usually work on them, but not for some of the more core packages. Because they are older, their gui's are not as polished as some of the more modern distros. RHEL4 came out in April or May of last year, and that is a long time for a Linux system. A lot can happen in a year. But, overall, they are fine, I think. I initially was going to use CentOS 4.3 for our project, but ran into a problem trying to upgrade sane to their most recent version. In hindsight, I probably should have just installed it from source. Fedora always seems flaky to me. No offense intended to the fine folks working on the Fedora Project, but it is, after all, a development distro, and it shows. But it probably should show. If it didn't, that would mean the Fedora developers are spending more time on non-development work, and development is what Fedora seems to be all about. My (biological) brother uses Fedora and loves it. I just don't think it is a good choice for a production environment - especially one that has a lot of users using it as a workstation. Slackware - I really like Slackware, but it can be a pain in the neck to use. I briefly looked at Vector Linux's website (never tried it, though), and they described Slackware as being about as friendly as a rattlesnake - and I concur, to some extent. There is definitely a learning curve involved with using Slackware. But I really appreciate what I learned about Linux by using Slackware. Upgrading, and even installing, packages that don't come with the Slackware distribution can be difficult - including some aspects of LTSP. I vaguely remember some of the ltspadmin utilities not working on Slackware. Maybe that has changed in the last year or two. Because Slackware is set up so differently in the background than any other distro, some install scripts don't like it very well. You can find a lot of Slack packages on linuxpackages.net, but I found it at least a little weak in this area. But of course, there is nothing wrong with installing from source. Some people say that Slackware people are snobs. Some may indeed be, but I have found them to have the *friendliest* and *most helpful* community of all of the above distros. ---- I remember really liking Corel Linux, but never really looked at Debian because the packages always seemed so old in comparison with the other systems. I understand that has changed with Ubuntu, but I've never tried it. Now that I know that it is used by the LTSP core developers, I might give it a try sometime. In all honesty, though, I think what has kept me from trying it more than anything else is it's rather unusual name, and the political correctness that seems to be at the foundation of the Debian community. From my *outside* point of view, it seems like everyone is so afraid to step on anyone's toes, that they never manage to get much done. Maybe I'm wrong? I also vaguely remember reading how they've renamed some things, like KDE, or something like that, and I didn't want to bother trying to learn new names. So I never really looked at it. But then again, I won't even try to use BSD because they have demons for their mascot, even though I have heard a lot of good things about it, and would otherwise actually like to try it. In any case, I hope this helps, or that at least somebody finds this useful. ----- I hope this doesn't start a war here, or anything. I really appreciate all of the work everyone in the many and various open source projects have done, and continue to do. I really do. I think everyone should spend at least some of their time giving of themselves and helping others. So even if I may have said something here that you don't like, please know that I appreciate your efforts, and applaud you for them. With kind regards to all. Peter, hieromonk ---- Dormition Skete Our Monastery Website: http://www.DormitionSkete.org Our Catechetical Website: http://www.TrueOrthodoxy.Info GOC of Greece Website: http://www.omologitis.org ---- _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net
