On 02/02/2010 21:21, Peter Alcibiades wrote:
There's a nice Slackware based educational distribution from Zenwalk. Very
worth a look. The Slack base makes it stable and fast. It is Xfce based
rather than Gnome.
The other one to consider is Skolelinux, aka Debian-EDU. This is Debian
Stable based. People don't realize that the main benefit of Debian is that
its a rolling distro, and so super easy to keep up to date.
I'm going to have a conniption fit (hey, do any Americans out there
actually know what 'conniption'
means? I don't) because my PC hasn't been updated since this morning.
The way it
works is, the distribution starts out in Experimental, then moves on a two
year or so cycle through Unstable, Testing to Stable. At which point it
really is Stable.
You can find links and reviews on Distrowatch.
http://distrowatch.com/
What you are getting from Ubuntu is a 6 month release cycle of a collection
of bits out of Debian Experimental. This largely negates the benefits of
being an apt distribution in terms of upgrade ease, and it also negates the
potential benefits for stability of being Debian based. As the cries of
grief and rage, which are heard regularly every six months from the
upgraders, go to show!
Only if you are obsessed with continual upgrades . . . :)
My current machines in my school have been running on Ubuntu 5.10 since
. . . err
October 2005 (!!!!!) without any internet connexion, upgrade or hitch
doing what
I want them to do.
Actually, having played around with more Linux distros than I can count
on my fingers and toes
together my conclusions are fairly crude for people in my position:
Stick to Debian derivatives and after that it really is nothing more
than a matter of taste.
I like GNU and XFCE; KDE is too Windowzy for my liking; however I do run
some KDE apps
via Gnome - doesn't really seem problematic. RunRev 4 and Metacard 4
both run superbly
on all 3 window managers; and, I would suppose, on Fluxbox,
Enlightenment and so on.
I chose Ubuntu because it was the first Debian derivative I came upon
that seemed well
documented and easy to install; but, hey, I'm the chap who when he
arrived in the USA in
1993 had to buy a computer and, having only previous experience of
main-frames, BBCs
and Archimedes, picked a Macintosh over a Windows because his maternal
grandfather's
name was McIntosh (well, not a bad choice, in the end), so don't expect
complete logic
from me.
You want six month release cycles (but why would you?) go to Mandriva.
Why bother with release cycles or upgrades? Find a system you like and
be done with it.
The only reason for eternal upgared is if you are developing for an
eternally upgrading market.
You
will sacrifice stability, but you do get something, ease of use combined
with being bang up to date. You want boring practical useful and stable,
and never having to think about upgrades again, go to Debian Stable.
I wouldn't put Ubuntu on any machine I was going to have to support.
Funny that, as I support and maintain Ubuntu on a fair number of lawyers'
and architects' machines round and about in Plovdiv - a monthly visit; a
cup of
coffee, an hour's "fiddle" with the machine;
sudo apt-get update
set any updates running and tell them to leave the machine alone until
'tomorrow'
Bob's your uncle!
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