On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 10:58 PM, chris (fool) mccraw <[email protected]> wrote: > my 3/4-baked theory is that many people new to linux use what their > friends suggest, or what they first or most compellingly hear about. > that is, they don't do comparative research between available/relevant > distributions and choose logically.
Sounds about right. In my case, no one I knew used Linux. At the time I took the plunge, the biggest debate (from what I could gather from USENET, anyway) wasn't so much, "Which distro?" but "Which package management?," with a growing vocal minority cheering for source-based packages. (Gentoo was making a big splash back then.) I wouldn't say my choice was necessarily logical, but I did some comparative research on the merits and drawbacks of RPM vs .deb vs source, and decided I liked the sound of .deb-based package managment best, given my needs and inexperience. So I tried Mepis and Libranet first, because Ubuntu didn't exist and pure Debian at the time scared the hell out of me, especially the process of getting it installed (which was far more complicated than it is today). Mepis had an excellent live CD that worked, and Libranet was easy to install. Now, though, I don't think "RPM hell" is such an issue and many of the major distros and their offshoots have done so much to abstract the package management process that it isn't such a major consideration. Michael M. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
