[members at lugog] Hi

[Matt Baker]

On 04/11/2011 16:03, GARY SEVIOUR wrote:
> I forgot to mention in my long post yesterday that Ubuntu vs Arch.
> Ubuntu is like buying a car (An Audi perhaps?), Arch is like building
> one from a selection of parts.

Was once a gentoo user for the same reason and decided I had less time 
to manage my machines as they broke on every package update and opted 
for devoting more time to work on the infrastructure I was supporting. 
If you actually want to use your computer for something other than 
learning about Linux then you're better off going for something that 
"just works"(tm).

> Which distro(s) do other lugogers use?

Debian. (Apart from sending this on a Mac (which I am in the middle of 
installing Debian on)). Have used Debian for about 12 years now and it's 
by far the most stable OS I've used. Would be a good replacement for 
those who like Ubuntu, but don't like their heavy handed enforcement of 
desktop standards. Ubuntu after all is based on Debian. It's great for 
those who want an OS which follows a rigid package maintenance and 
release program, least amount of functionality change between releases 
so no surprises, great security adherence, ... It has a massive 
community and has received many awards http://www.debian.org/misc/awards.

Other OSes that I've had reasonable success with or have heard others 
raving about; Fedora (free/dev version of RedHat, good for a corporate 
environment or a web server, downside with all rpm (except Suse) based 
distros is you need to mix 3rd party repos which makes dependency 
resolution and package updates less stable), Scientific Linux (like 
CentOS, tracks RedHat Enterprise Linux but has a large community which 
releases security updates faster), FreeBSD (OK not Linux but it's great 
for a network device or security hardened box, performance is better in 
some respects and has that DIY element like Arch and Gentoo), Gentoo 
(great if you want to learn how a Linux machine is tied together, has 
some great tools for distributed package and configuration management, 
downside is that you'll spend all day every day either recompiling or 
fixing package build problems).

Matt