[Gloucs] Bad Karma

[N Clarke]

So as somebody who abandoned Fedora for not being bleeding edge enough, 
I guess I'm somewhat outside the realms of the systems you describe in 
the rant :-)

Personally, I've found Arch (rolling release, and generally ships things 
as soon as they arrive) to be the most stable distro I've run. I've used 
it for a couple of years now, and ran it as my main system on everything 
from a netbook to the machines I was using as business machines when I 
was self-employed.

Nick

Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 12:52:46AM +0000, Francis Barton wrote:
>   
>> I got fed up with Ubuntu breaking every time I tried to dist-upgrade.
>> Variously, I had problems with broken fstabs + not finding partitions, or if
>> that worked then I would have X server config problems or something else
>> equally annoying.
>>
>>     
>
> Personal rant follows :) [Disclaimer: I'm a member of the Debian, Ubuntu 
> and Fedora communities and contribute to each in varying extents.]
>
> In the widest Linux community, we never forget you have a choice :)  
>
> Debian
>
> _Large_ distribution. The basis for Ubuntu and Ubuntu-alikes as well as 
> Knoppix and 30-100 other active derived distributions. Long development 
> period means that some packages in Debian stable are old. 1000 
> developers worldwide. Releases once every two years or so: releases 
> supported for a year after the next release. If you want more up to date 
> - try Debian testing :)
>
> Ubuntu 
>
> Ubuntu is designed primarily for a specific target audience - people who 
> want a desktop that just works, has an amount of new features with each 
> release and is ... pragmatic ... about the need to run only Free software.
> It's greatest weakness is that it is forked from Debian unstable on a 
> strict six month cycle - there are relatively few core developers and 
> some instability results. Intended primarily for desktop users, 
> initially.
>
> Ubuntu derived distributions
>
> Generally slightly modified. May include non-free drivers out of the box 
> / user enhancements. Linux Mint is probably one of the more well known 
> of these. Sound / wifi / other firmware is likely to work :) These 
> distributions generally lag Ubuntu so issues found in Ubuntu may be 
> resolved here. Very small numbers of developers.
>
> Red Hat Enterprise Linux
>
> Red Hat Enterprise Linux is designed for servers, stability and large 
> corporates - if you can afford to build a rackful of brand name servers 
> in a hosted data centre then someone, somewhere will mandate that your 
> services are critical and need Red Hat support personnel at the end of 
> a phone to shout at. The development community is a closed 
> community and largely a closed book. Nominally fixed at release time, - 
> and therefore binary compatible throughout a major release - in 
> practice, there is slow change, there are huge numbers of tacit 
> backports and fixes which are barely documented in the course of the 
> seven year support and a steady flow of "preview releases/features" with 
> each Red Hat point release. Paid for support means that verified updates 
> keep your system up to date and that these are the only means of 
> updating Red Hat. 
>
> Red Hat derived community
>
> Centos
>
> CentOS is Red Hat for the poor - all the same quality, but you get to do 
> all your own support and community-contributed code is a completely unknown 
> quantity. The active development community is relatively small but 
> focussed - primarily on repacking Red Hat .rpms and legitimately 
> removing branding. Red Hat fulfil their obligations under the GPL by 
> releasing source, Centos satisfy underfunded users by providing a binary 
> compatible distribution for those that can't afford full Red Hat 
> support costs and Red Hat maintains a pool of Red Hat capable users who 
> will probably pay for Red Hat at some point when they can 
> afford to/someone tells them to :)
>
> Fedora
>
> Fedora is a Red Hat alike Linux distribution only in the sense that it 
> uses .rpm and is the community developed distribution from which Red Hat 
> cherry picks features for Red Hat Enterprise (Fedora having been forked 
> from Red Hat originally when Red Hat Enterprise Linux became a fully 
> commercial product). It has a large number of developers, a fierce 
> commitment to Free software - and a cavalier attitude to server compromises, 
> root privileges and user installation of packages. [See Fedora 12] It is 
> developed on a set six month cycle and is supported for only 18 months. 
> It is dynamically unstable and intended to be such as a forcing house for 
> new development. It is not suited for casual users or, possibly, any 
> other than committed Fedora developers.
>
>   
>> This has happened too many times to me, so I switched to Linux Mint (
>> linuxmint.com) which I love, so far.  OK, it's not updated as often as
>> Ubuntu, but I have been _so_ impressed.
>>
>>     
>>> Any one else having a bad time with Karmic Koala? My laptop (never Linux
>>> friendly) hates it and seems to have most bugs whinged about on the
>>> forums. Should have stuck with JJ. A fresh KK install hasn't made things
>>> better. Next stop Fedora 12.
>>>
>>>       
>
> On my netbook, a clean install of Ubuntu Netbook Remix has been the most 
> successful Linux thus far on that platform. Horses for courses ... ?
>
>   
>>> --
>>> Best Regards
>>> Glyn Davies
>>>
>>>       
>
> All best,
>
> AndyC
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> gloucs mailing list
> gloucs at mailman.lug.org.uk
> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gloucs
>