[Malvern] Ubuntu CDs update

[Chris Eilbeck]

On Fri, Nov 26, 2004 at 05:48:02PM -0000, ian.pascoe at bt.com wrote:
> I think we are missing the point here - until we try this "new" distro
> we won't know if it is any better / worse or what the variations are
> between it and it's parentage.

I just feel like I'm missing something and I don't have the motivation to
play with this that others seem to have.  The website talks in terms of
being good for the user community etc. but it's not clear what this
offers over the Debian on which it's based.

> For those of us who have been in the Linnux camp for some time a round
> up of those distros that have been tried and their potential uses would
> be of interest - ie which would be used for a domestic set up single PC
> and which has the best networking facilities for home use etc etc.

Well in terms of networking etc. they're all much of a muchness apart
from customised things like Smoothwall.  There are multimedia-based
distributions too which I've not played with but to me a lot of the
choice between distros comes down to how easy they are to administer.  I
started out with Softlanding Systems Linux back in 93 or so (learnt a lot
from Andy in the process) then looked at things like Yggdrasil and
finally moved to Slackware.  This was fine back then because CDs were
very rare and I soon got bored with schlepping floppies around and moved
to Redhat.  This was fine for a while until Mandrake came along which
promised me more performance on the same hardware.  I stuck with this for
many years until last year when I first started tinkering with Debian
seeing as I could use the same skills to administer all my machines
whether they're Intel or Alpha or Sparc.  It also got me out of the
dependency hell that you can get into with the likes of Redhat and
Mandrake.

> This is probably a stupid question from someone who is new to this game
> but as Linnux is modular can you transport one module from one distro
> into another thereby getting the best of both worlds?

Theoretically yes.  I've not done it but you can run a Mandrake or Redhat
install and use Debian or SuSe packages instead.

Chris
-- 
Chris Eilbeck                         mailto:chris at yordas.demon.co.uk
MARS Flight Crew                              http://www.mars.org.uk/
UKRA #1108 Level 2                                                UYB
TRA #9527                                                        PSMR