[cumbria_lug] New distro advice

[Michael Saunders]

On Mon, 9 Feb 2004, Russ Phillips wrote:
>
> I'm sure you'll all have your favourites, but I'd like reasons why I
> should go with whatever you recommend, so that I can make an
> informed choice :-)

Well, I've done stacks of distro reviews for LXF over the years so
hopefully I can give an informed view, but no doubt it'll be twisted
slightly by my own personal preference :-)

If you're looking for a rock solid, fast and clean system with KDE 3.1
and other goodies, Slackware 9.1 is well worth considering. In its
default configuration it boots in around half the time of Fedora Core
1; with some tweaking it's even faster (particularly important on
laptops). The fundamental Slack philosophy is simplicity, evident in
the marvellously clean init scripts, no-nonsense packaging system and
overall distro design.

Of course, Slack isn't for everyone and takes some learning -- still,
as you're familiar with Debian it won't be hard to grasp. Remember the
old saying, "Once you go Slack, you'll never go back", and Patrick
Volkerding's effort in producing a sane and neatly laid-out system is
second to none. Heaps of add-on packages at http://linuxpackages.net

Perhaps even give FreeBSD a try! Its hardware support for x86 desktop
kit isn't quite as comprehensive as Linux's, but nonetheless it works
well with excellent performance and reliability. Right now I'd avoid
Mandrake; the QA on 9.2 was dire (with update packages breaking
things) but hopefully their Community/Official system will help.

Mike

-- 
Michael Saunders
www.aster.fsnet.co.uk