[Lancaster] Help me select a distrob

[Ken Hough]

Clair wrote:
> On Thursday 20 April 2006 16:52, you wrote:
> 
>>Clair wrote:
>>
>>
>>snip
>>
>>
>>>I'd suggest avoiding SuSE - very non-standard and I dislike the wizards,
>>>and the fact you _have_ to use them.
>>
>>Distros are now mostly non-standard in some way. Debian is reckoned to
>>be about as standard as it gets, but it's also one of the most techy of
>>distros to manage.
>>
>>What wizards? Everything is done under YAST. Simple! Why not use it? If
>>you do need to do something manually that's not covered by YAST
>>(rarely), then it's not a problem.
> 
> 
> By the wizards, I meant YAST. I once put SuSE on a 300MHz box, and had to use 
> YAST. Paaaaiiinnn.....

It will run OK on a 300 MHz box given sufficient memory (at least 128MB, 
but better with 256MB). I run SuSE v9.1 on a couple of Athlon boxes, 
each with 512MB of RAM, and an 800MHz PIII laptop with 384MB of RAM.

On a sensibly modern PC it's very good. YAST does a lot of work and 
needs a bit of ooomph to run well. If you still wish to use obsolete 
gear then do without the modern comforts and go with a less friendly distro.

> 
> 
>>>FC5 is now all yum, there's now only one graphical frontend to it :)  -
>>>this is what I recommend.
>>
>>And this is better than YAST? YAST also has one (very good) front end.
>>YAST also has an alternative text based front end (via NCurses).
> 
> 
> I wouldn't know - I stick to using yum :)

Then maybe you should have a proper look at alternatives before 
criticising them.

> 
> 
>>>>Result: i usually recommend ubuntu. it has lots of wikis, newsgroups and
>>>>howtos - all of which are really important.
>>>
>>>I think they all do :)
>>
>>Here! Here!
>>
>>I really do despair. People use Fedora and Mandriva while acknowledging
>>that these distros have problems, and yet reject SuSE which does not (at
>>least not major ones).
> 
> 
> I only reject SuSE because it's too non-standard, that's all. YMMV. IMO, all 
> distros have their problems. :)

And their benefits. I happen to prefer the strengths and reliabilty of 
SuSE rather than admitted weaknesses of some other distros.

Ken Hough