[Preston] Getting Fedora to Work

[John]

Granville,

Any Linux distribution is a viable replacement for M$ Windows. For starters 
(unless you plan on purchasing a copy of RHEL) you can get Linux for $0 
(pardon the pun heh heh)... It all depends on what you want to do really. 
Personally, I have got Debian, FC1, FC2, FC3 and RHEL running and haven't 
had any problems with any of them. They will literally run and run and 
run... That's not to say that they don't have bugs, they most certianly do. 
The difference between Linux and M$ Windows is that with Linux you get the 
sum total of the expertise of the entire open source community to solve your 
problem. With good old M$, all you get is their team of employed 
programmers, a much more limited resource certainly in terms of numbers. 
With M$, we rely on their recruitment and staff retention capabilities 
whereas with the Open Source Community it's best of breed that wins (in 
evolutionary terms, Open Source is the strongest and the fittest).

Anyway, enough of plugging Linux heh heh....

If you want real stability, Debian is good but unless you align your system 
to the testing and unstable releases you are not going to get the latest and 
greatest (having said that, you may not want the latest and greatest). 
Debian is a good distro though and in my opinion it's apt package management 
software knocks spots off everything else I have seen on the other distros. 
Fedora has to be a serious contender. Much of it's development is sponsored 
by Red Hat and ultimately a lot of the FC stuff will find it's way into RHEL 
which at the moment is definitely the industry leader in terms of Corporate 
Linux. Suse has some pretty good admin tools and is also quite a popular 
distribution.

Personally, I stick to RH and FC. I have tried Mandrake, Suse, Caldera 
(united) and a few others. You can be overwhelmed by the choice (that's the 
beauty of Linux). One of my other favourites is a Debian based distro called 
knoppix. Nice for hacking into a locked down M$ Windows build :o).

As Ian has already stated, forget RH 9,8,7,6,5 etc... You would no more 
choose these than you would Windows 95 and 98 (it's not that the earlier RH 
releases are crap, far from it... They are just out of date and out of 
support now so if you do encounter any problems you aren't going to get them 
fixed - well not in a hurry anyway).

If it's total peace of mind that you want and you don't mind paying for a 
support contract then I would suggest Red Hat Enterprise WS (work station). 
Personally, I would choose Fedora Core 3 or Fedora Core 2 because as quickly 
as bugs crop up, some genius in the Open Source Community posts a fix in a 
couple of days (sometimes in a matter of hours!!)... You won't get that 
level of response from M$!!!

Happy hunting and do let us know what you decide to go for in the end

John
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ian Entwistle" <entwisi at dsl.pipex.com>
To: "Granville Cousins" <granville at yogawithgranville.com>; "Preston and 
Lancashire Linux User Group" <preston at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 8:47 PM
Subject: Re: Re[2]: [Preston] Getting Fedora to Work


>
>
> Red Hat is not the way forward for you. I recall you seem to have been
> through most distros having answered queries on Mandrake, Suse and
> others for you. For a beginner Mandrake is definitely the way to go. But
> before you install it hoping everything is going to go swimmingly do
> some research about what hardware you have in your PC. Use google to
> search for things like 'Netgear MA521+ linux' where that is my Wifi
> card. See if there are reports of it working or not. At least that way
> you will know if you are likely to experience problems or not.
>
> Linux is a perfectly capable replacement for Windows, it may need a
> little more research before you start, thats all. For working with
> Websites, Quanta and Bluefish spring to mind as suitable software
> packages but there are lots more, its up to you to choose what suits teh
> way your brain is wired.
>
> Ian
>
> On Thu, 2005-01-06 at 17:03 +0000, Granville Cousins wrote:
>> Hello Gareth,
>>
>> Hello PLUG,
>>
>> I am thinking that it may be a better choice to go for either Red Hat
>> Linux 9 or Red Hat Linux Enterprise rather than persisting with Fedora
>> Core releases. The reason being that these distributions have been
>> tried and tested in the field and are likely to incure less problems
>> when it comes to useing them as workable operating systems. May I ask
>> for your oppinion on this? What I would like idealy is a viable
>> replacement for Microsoft Windows Operating Systems. I have purchased
>> an AppleMac G4 Powerbook which is very stable and works well. But I
>> feel much more comfortable with a Windows based system. My main use is
>> for manageing and designing my Website and running my data base.
>>
> -- 
> Ian Entwistle <entwisi at dsl.pipex.com>
>
>
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