Hmm, now I am not sure what to do ;) I haven't moved away from Debian, just thinking about it. I am very particular about a nice tight base system, and just installing the stuff I want, apart from KDE. The thing with Debian is that it sucks majorly for modern PCs. I have an nVidia GeForce II 64M AGP card and Debian hates it. Well, what I mean is that I need XFree 4.0.1 or higher, and when I try to install these required XFree things at 4.1, it never works! I asked several times if I had to install in a particular order, and it still says I can't do it. Debian just pisses me off majorly in this regard. I am seriously thinking of buying hardware around a distro, like getting a generic PCI TNT2 video card ot an ATI or something that Linux installers can probe and install the necessary stuff, and I don't need the latest XFree for.
It's true that I don't want to sit here and become a bloody sysadmin just to get the system running, I do just want to get stuff done. But I am security concious and very paranoid. I have my firewall on tight security mode, only allowing incomming HTTP from certain IPs and stuff. I also only allow ICMP when necessary, I don't even allow ping (actually thinking of allowing ping for those who I let use my HTTP port). Aside from that I am still stuck! Don't know what the hell to do. Never want to go back to Windows, no way. So it's Linux or BSD. But I am not familiar with BSD and don't really fancy running my 128K ISDN connection which is on most of the time with a static IP with a new distro I am not familiar with. Cheers James On Saturday 05 January 2002 12:38 pm, Alan Vink wrote: > 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
