On Wed, 14 Aug 2002, Brendan Dacre wrote: > What distribution should I use as my base?
You're pretty much going to get a survey of people's preferences, and not very much constructive advice. I like Debian, and it sounds like you would too (but that's what everybody says about their distribution of choice). To help you choose, I'll discuss each of your criteria in turn and why Debian is a good choice. > The main criterion is what I call "maximum parsimony". I do not want > bloated installs (one of my reasons for being disenchanted with > Windows). I only want to install on each machine the minimum needed to > serve the purpose of that machine and then to add/remove (reasonably > easily) packages I need (or don't as the case may be). At least two > (one server and one workstation) will be designated "production" and I > want them to always work, be stable and easily maintainable (upgradeable > and patchable). Debian has a nice dependency system which means that when you want to install something, it installs everything else needed automatically. Note I say 'needed' - that is, 'if you haven't got this it won't work'. Extra additions are Recommended or Suggested by a package, but aren't installed by default using apt-get. > I am a programmer (of sorts) so I eventually want to learn how to > install and modify source distributions. I am also planning to do some Debian has nice source and binary package formats, and actively encourages fiddling with the source code. Source code for a package is as easy to get as typing 'apt-get source <packagename>'. > work on an open source project, so I will be targeting machines for a > number of purposes. To this end, it would be preferable for me to be > able to create my own distributions from a suitable base. I won't have Simple to do with Debian, using any number of methods. My choice is FAI and a funky script I've developed from info given here on the SLUG list. > a lot of choice what hardware I use (much of it will be old) and I may > have to trash and rebuild some machines multiple times. I will not > necessarily have a bootable CDROM drive. FAI is cool for this sort of thing. Set up machine configs on the server (from common bases if several machines have common configs) then install over the network. All you need is a network and a boot floppy. > I regard these things as base for all machines: > > Linux kernel supporting machine hardware > Base networking > C/C++ compiler to be able compile kernel/modules locally on machine > Printing > Web browsing > X windows on workstations, not servers I think any general purpose Linux distro is going to come with those. > I am not afraid of the command line and advocate scripting to automate > processes. Debian is almost one big script. <g> > However, graphical/browser interfaces sometimes make things > easier in certain circumstances. I am not sure whether what I have said > makes me sound like a "hacker", but I think that I am more a "control > freak". My objective is to control and customize my environment. Most GUI controllers have been packaged for Debian, but Debian has one of the sanest config file layouts I've seen, not being afraid to change something if it's stupid. > Please in your replies also state a local (Sydney, preferably in the > city) source of the latest version of the distribution on CD at a > reasonable price (approximately the cost of the medium). That I don't know for any distro. I have a phat pipe with a CD burner at the end, which I use to suck down Debian disks and burn locally. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- #include <disclaimer.h> Matthew Palmer, Geek In Residence http://ieee.uow.edu.au/~mjp16 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
