[Lancaster] Re: the kitchen network.

[Ken Hough]

For others reading this, please read 'Debian' rather than 'Mandrake'. As 
I mentioned to Martyn, there was a bit of 'early morning syndrome'.


Martyn Welch wrote:
> ------ Original message ------
> On Tuesday 08 Jun 2004 09:28, you wrote:
> 
> 
>>Martyn,
>>
>>I'm sending this message directly to you and not to the LUG board.
>>
>>I was surprised by some of the comments in your message below and have
>>already made some comments. I wish to add the following.
>>
>>As you know, I do not profess to be a Linux expert. I have spent some
>>time trying out various Linux distros and so have something of a flavour
>>of most of the best known.
>>
> 
> 
> I wouldn't concider myself to be an expert either, I know enough to get by, 
> however other people seem to think so...

One eyed man in the land of the blind.... You know a lot more about 
Linux systems then I do.

Ken
> 
> 
>>Mandrake seems to be very 'neat', provided you know it. It's not the
>>most friendly of distros.
>>
> 
> 
> I'd agree to a point, it very much depends on ones take on the word friendly.
> 
> 
>> From your comments, it seems clear that you have little real knowledge
>>of SuSE. Like some others that I've spoken to, your knowledge of YAST
>>(and SuSE in general) seems to be based on hearsay and even then on old
>>versions of SuSE. It has to be said that older versions of YAST were
>>somewhat shaky in places. SuSE has changed very much since say version
>>7. YAST originally came as two separate programmes. ie One providing a
>>text based interface and another providing a GUI. Maintaining both was a
>>problem, so YAST now comes as a single programme (YAST2) which is
>>capable of using either a text based interface or a GUI. Since SuSE
>>v8.2, the text based interface has become very slick. I often use this
>>interface to run YAST, when I've got 'X' running as a normal user. In my
>>experience, YAST is now by far the most refined and comprehensive
>>installation/management tool of all.
>>
> 
> 
> I have a copy of 8.2, I got it on the front of a Linux Mag. Installed it but 
> didn't get along with it. I'm sure YAST is very good, however I found the 
> experience rather to fluffy for my liking (in terms of eye-candy). Rather 
> than spend ages learning the tricks for yet another distro and spend time 
> removing/changing alot of the eye-candy I gravitated back to the distros I 
> know. I'm YAST it's a wonderful tool when you get to know it, however upto 
> recently it has also been very proprietory and hence I favoured the distros 
> that implemented fully open contenders, especially for the LUG.
> 
Perhaps you should have tried a text mode installation. I guess it would 
have been more to your liking. v9.1 is again very much improved.

Ken

> 
>>The text based interface uses 'ncurses' which allows for colour, for
>>'window' boxes and a lot more on a text terminal. I have used 'ncurses'
>>for my own 'C' programmes. It's good!
>>
>>WRT manual hacking, you will remember at the last LUG meeting, you hand
>>edited the 'inittab' files on the terminals with very successful
>>results. All three terminals are running SuSE.
>>
> 
> 
> I realise that, I just prefer not to do much of this kind of hacking, it's 
> hard to keep track of the changes made and I usually end up loosing them 
> after a reinstall...

You would loose changes after a full reinstallation of any distro. I 
guess you mean an update.

Ken

> 
>>I have no problems if [Debian] turns out to be the best choice for the
>>LUG server, but let's have discussions based on facts. At this stage I
>>still have reservations, mainly wrt the use of 'old' (Woody)or unproven
>>(Sarge) distros and to the need to be familier with [Debian] to be able
>>to manage it. If you or Andy are not around, who else knows [Debian]?
>>
>>I believe it's worth looking at what distros the industrial heavyweights
>>are going with.
>>
> 
> 
> Debian is generally concidered to be one of the best distributions for 
> servers, this is primarily what it is aimed at. It's extremely stable when 
> the stable branch is used, testing os often concidered as stable as many of 
> the other distros. Don't forget Debian also has unstable and experiemental 
> distributions as well.
> 
 From what I can find in a quick scan through the ads., a lot of 
professional server boxes are set up with Red Hat. So far I haven't 
discovered any specific mention of Debian. In the 64 bit field SuSE figures.

WRT stability, It seems to me unlikely that IBM, HP, Novell, etc would 
choose other than Debian if it had clear advantages.

Are we to look backwards to an old and dated distro or forward to where 
Linux is going? After all, the Folly server won't be supporting NASA.


Ken Hough