On Wed, 14 Aug 2002, James Gregory wrote: > Brendan Dacre wrote: > > "production" and I want them to always work, be stable and easily > > maintainable (upgradeable and patchable). > > The standard answer at this point is debian. I suspect I will be > considered "odd" for saying so, but I've not had good experiences with > debian and upgrading software.
My gut feeling at this point is Debian, But I am only just about to start using it myself. I'm normally a Slackware user, but Slackware is targeted at production environments where the intention is not to upgrade anything that works, and it all works out of the box. i.e. upgrades not automated. > If you really do want to start from scratch (and IMHO it's much more > work than it's worth), try linuxfromscratch > (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/) I will pass on advice from someone I know who's done it: It's far easier to customise (and strip down) slackware than to build from scratch. :) > In the other two cases, again, any packaged distribution will do that. > You just need to add the packages to your CD and add those packages to > the relevant "list" of packages. Agreed. They all have methods of setting up a custom 'Standard' installation set, and all have the option of installing or not installing development packages and X. > Ok, I recommend the following: > > use Debian on your servers. If you don't ask it to do extraordinary > stuff (and I know I'm going to be rebutted there) it will work, it will > be stable and secure and it will give you an easy way to upgrade your > software. > > For your workstation machines, Mandrake is great. It's a really nice > desktop OS. It also has a easy way to install and upgrade new software, On the whole, good advice. It's up to you whether you want the variety of using two distributions rather than one. :) -- Jessica Mayo. (Everything with a Grin :) -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
