I've been looking/trying different distros as a desktop Linux install for a bit. There are things I like and dislike about all of them. I thought I would ask what you are using these days. (I know, close to inviting a flame war.)
Also, I was brought up custom coding an ipchains script (which I directly translated to iptables) to specify as exactly as possible what source/destination/ports were allowed in and out, and deny all other traffic. A lot of distros have pre-configured firewalls now. iptables has a lot of advancements that would probably make things shorter, but I haven't looked at the default firewall or changing my script much because my old script still works fine and is very secure. Are the default firewalls good (with customizations) or are they just good enough effort until you can get a custom written firewall in place? My Distro History Long ago when Red Hat offered free ISO's I started there, I moved to Mandrake/Mandriva since it was similar but left it around 2007. So I have a largely RPM background. Most recently, I have used OpenSUSE at work and Ubuntu at home for desktop use. There are things I like and don't like about all of them as a desktop. Debian - I tried it, very roughly around 2002. I had trouble remembering how to use it's (text based) package management (and getting out of trouble if I pressed the wrong key) so I went back to a RPM distro. I left Mandriva when a) I carefully set up SSH to be as secure as I could before turning it on b) Mandriva shut down SSH because of a security policy c) I changed the security policy to allow SSH d) Mandriva changed the security policy back to shut down SSH Now I see they made a patch release in December but only project support through July for the free version, so I would have to upgrade soon. OpenSUSE there is the philosophical issue of Novell / Microsoft. Ubuntu - I haven't used it much recently so it may have improved, but I got very tired of having to put in my password every time I switched administrative applications. Thanks, Paul Boniol -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en
