Another Devils advocate, I agree with Stephen Borg. It is important to "understand" what you are doing when using any distro, with the more "efficient" or "modern" as someone called it distros - it is possible for people that do not understand to go wild and install services and apps with packages while never even thinking of possible ramifications and system compromises that this "loose cannon" approach can cause.
I prefer to think of the more current Redhat distros as giving the average user alot of options, those that "understand" will install only what they need, possibly by selecting the packages individually from a requirements list or doing a scripted install. After that it is always important to "check" the core services. How are they installed, does that suit my application, are there any suggested updates, install a known good firewall config etc? It's also important to "understand" the release philsophy of distros, Redhat for one (opinion follows) get stuff out the door quick, Debian is far more conservative, and perform better QA (which I like personally). Work with past experiences and this *type* knowledge in mind at all times. By moving away from the more "modern" distros you will undoubtedly be less efficient on some areas of admin on a linux box. I believe that cutting down options is never a good thing, don't move away from Debian or Redhat for the wrong reasons. Both these distributions are commonly used and have a large user base - for good reason. Advice: Install the latest RH, be selective with the install, fix the stuff that is broken (most of it is available on www.redhat.com), update and note core services - you then have a base system that is current, well supported and you know whats running on it too. You never mentioned why you moved from Debian??? Many people stop there:~) Regards, Alan Vink -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Karl Clements Sent: Saturday, 5 January 2002 10:43 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SLUG] Slackware anybody? I have been using slackware on my gateway/firewall machne for the better part of a yer i think, it originated as rh5 then slack 4 now slack8, its good it stays up for days/weeks/months on end (subject to power outages). I had no problem getting it going at all on my gateway I also use slack8 on my workstation, i didn't want to have a bloated install so i installed mostly the base packages then downloaded and compiled them, there are advantages to downloading and compiling over a packagemanagment tool a) you know where it will end up b) you can optimise it for your system c) you configure it with options you want I did have some trouble getting X going on my workstation but that was primarily because my video card and monitor suck, but after spending 20-30mins reading the XF86Config man file i was able to write my own config that worked. I think slack is a good distro because it doesn't have the bloat of others, and it is very easy to install. As for your questions,video is a kernel thing, slack8 does have isdn packages (plus the kernel aspect) it comes with kde2.1.1 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
