[Lancaster] Help me select a distrob

[Ken Hough]

mp wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-04-20 at 16:52 +0100, Ken Hough wrote:
> 
> 
>>I note that many of the reviewers have switched to SuSE. That must say 
>>something.
> 
> 
> Like 1000s of billions of flies eat shit, or people like to watch Jerry
> Springer - what does that mean, mewonders?

I won't bother commenting.

> 
> 
>>SuSE WORKS and WORKS very well. If, like me, you want an easily 
>>installed/configured system that (contrary to comments made previously) 
>>is easy to reconfigure, then it's up there with the best. It's a very 
>>professional product.
> 
> 
> Yea, it is a professional product, but more importantly, for me, it is a
> huge corporate project of a company that makes hundreds of millions of
> dollars on it, which is my reason for NOT wanting to choose it.
> 
> Ubuntu helps Debian, which is a community project that intersects with
> other social movement projects, such as Indymedia, and that is why I
> choose to use Ubuntu: it is grass-roots connected, yet it is very
> user-friendly and up-2-date with the newest drivers and features.
> 

I think that you will find that the major distros are all pretty well up 
to date and can be kept that way by a visit to the relevant web site.

> I realise that these are political reasons, and that they are not the
> concern for the pure, objective engineer - but I believe that to be an
> illusionary position anyway: everything is political; certainly software
> is.

I really don't understand your arguments. Yes! NOVELL makes money out of 
applying SuSE. Red Hat makes money out of Fedora. But let's remember 
that they also fund development of these distros which all of us have 
access to.

Ubuntu is funded by Mr Shuttleworth via his own money and all credit to 
him for that. Again we all have access to the distro.

There are now many businesses based on making money out of applying 
Linux, but unlike the above, they do not directly fund Linux.

All of these activities are good for Linux as a whole and result in more 
and more people being exposed to Linux and to developments being pushed 
along. That's got to be good for all of us.

So let's not get hung up on fine words like "community project that 
intersects with....". If all had been left only to Debian, Linux 
wouldn't be as far ahead WRT development as it currently is.

 From what I have read, until recently, the politics within Debian were 
killing it!

Ken Hough