distrowars [was: Re: [Sderby] Printers and Linux]

[Dave Coulson]

Richard Smedley wrote:

>On Fri, 2004-11-19 at 15:59, Dave Coulson wrote:
>  
>
>>Thanks to all who considered my problem. It seems as if upgrading is the 
>>best way to recognise my printer, but to what distro. Someone mentioned 
>>Gentoo and I had a quick look at the site, but what is the general 
>>opinion and how close to the traditional Linux is it. I would hate to 
>>have to use lots of packages and scripts which would not be recognised 
>>in other distro's. Maybe its better to stick with Slackware and the 
>>likes. All opinions welcome!
>>    
>>
>
>Hello Dave,
>
>You do realise you've just lit a fuse with a
>question meaning ``What is the /true/ GNU/Linux 
>distro?'' ?
>
>If you regard GNU as, despite its acronym, a mere
>copy of Unix, then there are strong argument for
>Slackware. It'll certainly teach you a great deal 
>about *nix. However it's not easy to maintain, well
>not at upgrade time anyway, so if you wanted to go
>this way you'll be better off with FreeBSD.
>
>SuSE's heritage goes back as far as Slackware's, and
>it certainly has a strong following, but like Mandrake
>it has its own set of tools, so knowledge is not necessarily
>transferrable.
>
>Debian GNU/Linux has had strong historical links with
>the FSF, so is perhaps the nearest thing to a real GNU,
>concernes about non-free and contrib notwithstanding.
>Debian is also ditributed in a variety of other
>distros - so why not follow the crowd and get Ubuntu:
>http://www.shipit.ubuntulinux.org/
>
>You can use Ubuntu's tools, standard Debian GNU tools,
>and update it with 11,000 packages from Debian. :-)
>
>Of course if you and your computers have a *lot* of
>free time, then Gentoo is certainly worth trying ;)
>
> - Richard
>
>btw did I forget to mention Fedora, hmm, must be a
>reason for that ;^)
>
>  
>
I do seem to have started a bit of a discussion and inevitably the 
answer comes back to -- it depends on what you want and what you want to 
run. I will consider all suggestions so thanks to all who replied. 
Perhaps we could have a section on the web page where distro's are 
compared from our own experiences.
Cheers Dave Coulson