[SWLUG] Which distribution?

[Gareth Bowker]

On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 09:55, Davage, Marcus wrote:
> I've only ever tried Mandrake, and have been reasonably happy with it. I
> don't know if it's my distribution, or Linux in general, but I get really
> p'ed off when I find a nice little application, download it, and it fails to
> install due to a dependency error - both the RPM and the source
> ./configure;make routes. <Sigh>

This is one of the nice things about apt. I run debian exclusively at
home and RedHat here at work. I've installed apt here as I find it
invaluable. It sorts out all the dependency problems for you, pretty
much. To give an example for people who haven't used it, if I want to
install package x, which depends on y, which in turn depends on z, I
simply type:

apt-get install x

and apt will install y and z for me. It simply prompts me to make sure
that I want to install the extra packages.

I use apt for RedHat from http://apt-rpm.tuxfamily.org/ 

Going back to the original question about which distribution, my
personal preference is Debian along with the other replies. It's not the
easiest to get set up, but once it is, it's very stable and upgrading
from one version to another is a quick config file edit followed by
apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade. Incredibly simple, incredibly
powerful. The install's not for everyone though - if you don't feel
confident using the advanced install options with your current
distribution, then Debian's probably not for you just yet. If you know
which modules that your system loads on startup and how you want to
partitions set out though, then debian's a much better choice.

On the other hand, if you're happy with Mandrake, then you might as well
stick with it and worry about it disappearing only if/when it actually
happens. I think they'll be around for a little while yet.

Good luck,

Gareth