[Wylug-help] Which Version of Linux?

[John Hodrien]

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005, Dave Fisher wrote:

> I'm not sure that system administration should be a priority either.
>
> A stable system based on the distributor's default setup is going to be
> far more helpful for the task of learning how things work, than one
> which is constantly being tweaked and 'administered'.
>
> I can't tell you how many times newbie friends of mine have asked me for
> help recovering systems that they've trashed through 'premature
> administration'.

Agreeing with you on one hand, I'd also say that of the people I know that got
to know how to admin linux well, all were premature administrators.  I quite
like that term Dave, I'll have to try and remember it.

> On the other hand, I'd expect most experienced users would back me up in
> suggesting that distro-specific learning can occasionally make the long
> term task of learning Linux a bit harder, i.e. you invest the time you
> could have spent learning stuff that works on any Unix-like system on
> acquiring non-transferable skills/knowledge.

I certainly suffered from this (as an early Mandrake user).  But then as
experience grew (and without switching distro) I was able to learn the more
generic way of doing things.  As long as you try and eek out the generic way
of doing things, it can be helpful to have easy GUI based things to act as
another form of documentation, showing you some of what can be done.

> For some one in a hurry, the default setup and the single configuration
> interface (Yast) are better than anything I've seen on other distros.

The only problem I've had with SuSe is when yast decides it's not going to
work.  Then your one-stop-shop starts to look a little less desirable.

jh

-- 
"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one."
                                                      -- Aurelius