[Lancaster] Re: Install Fest

[Matt S Trout]

On Sat, Sep 03, 2005 at 03:58:35PM +0100, Ken Hough wrote:
> >One that *is* well worth considering is VectorLinux, a desktop-oriented
> >Slack-derived distro whose latest release has gorgeous KDE and Gnome 
> >desktops
> >and a mostly-working preview of the new e17 Enlightenment release.
> >
> 
> Hang on a minute! We're doing installations for supposedly 'newbies'. 
> Shouldn't we stick to mainstream user friendly distros so that they can 
> more easily find help after we have gone?

Right. Hence why I'm advocating one that (1) has lots of packages, (2) an
active user community, (3) can install RPM,SLP,DEB and TGZ packages out of
the box, and (4) actually runs nicely on old hardware. Fedora Core and its
ilk fail on (3) and (4), and IMO fail on (1) if you expect the packages to
actually work - and the Fedora "community" tends to mostly be a bunch of
idiots; the people with clue tend to migrate to a useful distro as fast
as their fdisk can carry them ...

See http://www.madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=4966 for a review. The
important bit here is that it runs *fast* and *pretty* on old hardware,
which at the very least makes it a candidate for older machines. And nobody
objected to Ubuntu, which hasn't been around nearly as long and I suspect
still isn't as efficient.

-- 
     Matt S Trout       Specialists in perl consulting, web development, and
  Technical Director    UNIX/Linux systems architecture and automation. Mail
Shadowcat Systems Ltd.  mst (at) shadowcatsystems.co.uk for more information

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