[cumbria_lug] Re: Distro advice war

Tue Feb 24 13:11:39 GMT 2004

Rodger wrote :---
Humm. Well, I'm glad I started this all off...

Trevor writes :====
Rodger good on ya.
:----
As those in this list who know me know, I am more than capable of running a
system from a command line. My octal is still good and my knowledge of Edlin
is second only to, er, Ed.

But life's too short and hardware is too cheap.
:=====
I agree and disagree, for us perhaps, I am thinking today how many Hard drives
should I buy next ? BUT as others will point out not everybody can afford hardware
by the bucket, speaking of which I have some spare CAT5e cable (approx 250m) going free
to a good home.
:------
Of _course_ I run a windowing environment on my servers. Why would you not?
In fact, if you include Webmin, VNC and local access I run at least three
regularly and since my Linux choice is good, they all run just fine.
:=== 
You need to run a windowing enviroment on your client, web servers/pages etc.
will run fine without.  There are many reasons not to run  a windowing system
on a server performance and security are the most important.  Remember you can start
and stop X windows as and when you need it e.g. on login 
( add startx to the end of your logon script) another 'Linux is better than MS' point.
:----
It's XP on my client and that runs just fine too.

:==== Booo evil microsoft lover HISSSSSS

:----

The point I was making in my original post was that what I'm after in this
fine balancing act that is a modern day operating system is that it _does
not_ fall over. When I use any of my choice of GUIs or drop into a command
line, or use a control panel app or stick a tape in a tape drive I _expect_
the thing to stay up and work. Hell, even Windows stays up most of the time
and works reasonably frequently.

Mandrake, Slackware and the like all fall over (in my experience). Debian
doesn't have half the useful software 'cos it's distributed by fanatics. The
on-line distros... Well, who's got the time? SuSE stays up but half the RPMs
fail to install and RedHat is too expensive. For now, it looks like Fedora
is a good choice.
:======
Whhhr ? Linux has been far more stable in my experiance than that other
offering. Linux comes with everything out-of-the-box for less than the cost of
ONE MS add-on such as Office ! not to mention Development software/web server or
Databases whcih I regard as essential. a image manipulation program and the ability
to create PDF files ? Are you adding up the Microsoft cost ?

On your XP box what choice of GUI do you have ? 

Have you noticed that the performance of windows (any version) degrades
over time it get slower and less reliable the more you use it. Linux doesn't
do that. 

I think all Linux variants are distributed by fanatics. I'm a fanatic. 
I do not produce a Linux distribution but will supply Fedora etc. on request

I am willing to put the time in to download distro's but they seem to be
easy to get hold of without that. I've got hundreds of distros.

:-----

Gnome, KDE? Well a choice from two is not bad. It'd be nice to have
OpenOffice running faster and it'd be nice to have Java support in a browser

:====
Gnome, KDE, FVwm, blackbox ... There are quite a few others too. Microsoft offers
no choice at all.  Java should work out of the box too. It would be nice if everything
ran faster as Micheal has said. 
:----
without building the thing practically from scratch. I don't mind any of
that on a server. Doing it on a client is no fun and doing it on 10,000+
clients in a corporation is a real job of work.

:====
Err well you build one and make 9,999 copies by disk-duplication all you need
is DHCP and NIS ! If you are unlucky and have more than one hardware platform
then you make 1 build per platform it makes sense to do it that way PLUS
you don't have to have someone to spend their entire working life monitoring
licencing!  Terminal Server is another option  It takes 14 staff to keep a 
business of 800 Microsoft users going here.

What I _really_ need to do is finish editing my holiday video so my parents
believe I really went away for a month last May. Tough enough on Windows but
on Linux still a non starter. At least Windows doesn't fall over when I turn
the firewire camcorder on...
:====
I'll bring the free Linux software you need
:----

Now for a bacon sandwich...

:====

Drop the bread eat the meat

Trevor 'carnivore' Pearson
trevor at haven.demon.co.uk