[Wylug-help] Now: Distro wars

[David Pashley]

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On Tuesday 03 December 2002 2:13 pm, Ricardo Campos wrote:
[NB: I am very Debian biased, so please take suitable pinches of salt.]

> > What differences did you find in ease of installation, if any? It
> > would also be interesting to hear what your systems of choice are now
> > & for what purposes.
>
[snip redhat and mandrake]
I haven't used anything other than debian in 2-3 years so I can't comment.

> I then moved to Debian, which I use on my desktop computer. started with
> Potato, and with the glory of broadband, updated to Woody, with only one
> glitch- X, which I had to do some manual magic to install the newer 4.x
> series. I did an absoloutely minimal install with the installer- deselected
> practically everything, and then installed the things I use (by this time I
> knew which apps I liked for what). apt-get is a wonder, the only downside,
> perhaps is that you don't have to learn where the config files are stored,
> which can make it tricky later. Please no flames, but I found the Debian
> install just awful- it took 3 attempts until I knew what I was doing. It'd
> probably seem a breeze now, since I'm comfortable with compiling my kernel.
>
Yes boot-floppies stink, Which is one of the reasons they are being replaced
with debian-installer. I haven't used it so I can't tell you what it is like.
I would image that it will also be very slightly unfriendly and most likely
not gui (althought I beleive there is a gtk frontend in development).

I hark from RH 5.0 days, so have no problem with using text based installers
or cfdisk, but I agree debian installer is not as simple as it could be.

I also understand that Debian are looking at the knoppix hardware detection
stuff, so things should be much improved for sarge.

> I use Gentoo on my laptop, because I wanted to eek out as much performance
> as I could out of it. Previously I had Redhat 7.3 on it, and I have noticed
> a significant performance difference, esp. with Mozilla and Open Office. I
> learnt ALOT in the Gentoo install- I used 1.2, as the 1.4rc seemed horribly
> broken (no pcmcia drivers, for example - fat lot of use). However the
> Gentoo docs are wonderfully written, step by step, and understandable. I
> also found that Gentoo has far more up to date apps, but hasn't (yet) shown
> any major bugs or instability. It is a hideously slow process, however, I
> wouldn't attempt it without broadband and a lot of spare time (it took a
> day for the base system, then overnight, then perhaps another day and
> night. I'm really impressed by Gentoo, and perhaps I'd switch to Gentoo for
> my desktop, if it wasn't for the awfully long time it takes to
> install/compile.
>
> I think I would probably use Debian for internal servers (in fact I do)
> that need to be stable but not necessarily need maximum performance or the
> newest bells and whistles, Gentoo for servers where performance *really*
> matters. Gentoo as well for desktops, esp. if you need up-to-date apps, but
> don't want to risk having a Debian testing or mixed system. But the choice
> is much of a muchness, since I really like both! And ipcop makes a groovy
> firewall. ;)
>
Not many people realise that debian has the advantages of gentoo. If you want
a source based distribution, then install pentium-builder and apt-src or
apt-build. These work exactly like apt-get, but download the source and build
the packages for you. As for being up to date, testing is incredably stable.
I run it on our servers in the office and have had no problem with them in
the 18-24 months they have been running.

> But for a newbie, I would say Redhat.
>
What about mandrake?

>
> > > And yes my line wrap's broke. Working on it ;)
> >
> > Dodgy webmail isn't it? ;)
>
> Yup!

I think you're going to have to press enter lots there.

- --
David Pashley
david@davidpashley.com
Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione.
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