[Wylug-help] Networking Linux PCs

[Frank Shute]

On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 04:10:43PM +0000, Dave Fisher wrote:
>
<snip>
>
> > On another point I'm currently using RH V8, but it appears buggy, is this
> > common my old RH V7.3 was more stable?
>
> RH are notorious (occasionally justifiably) for issuing new versions
> frequently, and updating/patching the bugs as their clients discover
> them.
>
> Most commercial distros, with the exception of specialist
> security/stability-oriented products suffer similar, if less severe
> churn effects.
>
> It's generally best to wait for a few months after a version release,
> then follow your installation by immediately applying every relevant
> package update that you can find on the distro's official site.

I'd agree with all that and with RH I generally found point releases
to be more stable e.g 5.2, 6.1 rather than 5.0, 6.0, 7.0 etc. and even
then I wouldn't install them until they had been out for a few months
and some of the bugs had come to light.

>
> For novices, this is typically easier and more reliable than attempting
> to get to grips with a conservative, non-commercial, distro like Debian.

This has always been the perceived wisdom but I often wonder how true
it is. I can't comment on Debian but having installed FreeBSD which I
was assured was terrifying and strictly for wizards, I found it to be
the easiest OS I had ever installed. It was really just a case of
being able to read the instructions with the partitioning being the
hardest bit (isn't it always when you dual boot?) although the
installer offers a sensible default.

I believe the FreeBSD installer is a bit minimalist much like Debian
but doesn't minimalist mean there's less to foul up? :)

It doesn't have things like linuxconf but all my hardware was detected
and I found it easy to configure/setup. I guess a newbie might not
find it easy to setup but I don't know if they'd find things like
linuxconf/yast much easier - certainly not in the long run IMO.

To be fair I wouldn't recommend FreeBSD to a newbie as there's a
smaller body of knowledge and support available but Debian's a
different matter in that respect.

Are there people on this list who have piled into Linux not knowing
any unix with a distro like Debian and if so how have they got on?
Doesn't Debian have a pretty good manual/handbook if I remember
rightly? I think there's also an O'Reilly book on Debian but I don't
know if it's pitched towards the newbie.

I suppose newbies might be put off by Debian as stable (or release?
Can't remember) is always someway behind the latest kernel and
utilities. But the stability of the release is what matters IMHO,
otherwise you can spend hours figuring out all sorts of horrid
problems, which you really don't want - especially if you're a newbie.

--

 Frank

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