[NBLUG/talk] recommendations for distro

E Frank Ball frankb at efball.com
Fri Nov 21 11:16:01 PST 2003


On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 07:33:46PM -0800, Mike Egan, ME wrote:
} 
} If you have some *NIX sysadmin experience, you may be happier with a
} distro like Debian. It locates config files for system configuration in
} consistent locations with other *NIX systems and generally expects you to
} modify your service configurations via text-editors by default. (Much like
} other *NIX-like systems.)


SuSE seems to be the closest match to HP-UX (HP unix) in terms of
locations of config files, but it's still pretty different.  This seems
like a poor criteria for choosing a distribution anyway.



} RedHat also uses locations for many configuration files that are consisten
} with *NIX distros, but also tends to add extra locations with other
} configurations. Also, RedHat tends to encourage users to use GUI-tools to
} configure services and parts of the OS.


Redhat/Mandrake/Turbo/Stampede/etc all have very similar configuration
(they all seemed to have started with RedHat code and diverged).
Debian/Knoppix/Lindows/Prodigy are all very similar.
SuSE and Slackware are both kinda unique.


} However, the Debian Installed (default) tends to be more difficult to use
} than the RedHat installer


Has anybody tried using knoppix to install and then "converting it" to
debian?   I used a Knoppix CD to get my X11 configured on a Debian
system, but I had to cut and paste in the fonts section from a Debian
XF86Config file because it was pretty different and the knoppix version
didn't work on a debian box.



} With Debian, it is often possible to upgrade from
} previous major releases to newer ones and have a working system in the
} end, while with RedHat major version upgrades (4.x to 5.x, 5.x to 6.x,
} etc)have historically been problematic. Most RedHat veterans have
} historically suggested  people using RedHat who wish to upgrade to a newer
} major release, just backup their own user files and just restore the new
} version from the beginning. (Things may have changed with RH 8 and 9)


Redhat upgrades are still hit and miss, and Fedora isn't likely to be
any better.


-- 

   E Frank Ball                frankb at efball.com



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