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The Linux Distribution Game 254

Posted by timothy from the move-your-token-6-spaces dept.
Ladislav Bodnar writes: "I have installed and used many Linux distributions. The editorial, entitled The Linux Distribution Game is the result of my personal experiences - it aspires to be a gentle introduction to the many distributions out there. The rest of the DistroWatch site provides pure facts; this is the only exception, although I promise to be as unbiased as possible." This page is nearly worth it for the logos alone; the links to obscure and semi-obscure distributions are a nice resource.
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The Linux Distribution Game More

The Linux Distribution Game

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  • Clearly goes to Icepack.

  • correction: (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10, 2001 @11:29AM (#2548517)
    In their page for debian, I noticed that for Debian, they said that the default desktop was "GNOME".

    The policy of Debian is NOT to have a default desktop, and GNOME is not favored over KDE (or vice versa).

    The default window manager is WindowMaker.

    The URL is
    http://www.distrowatch.com/debian.htm

    • Re:correction: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Mathetes ( 132911 )
      The page only lists released versions. KDE was not released as a part of the Debian 2.2 release. The only "desktop" included in Debian 2.2 is GNOME.
    • How is WindowMaker more "default" than GNOME is? I've never installed WindowMaker on Debian and it has never even suggested that I install it.

  • Hey, good page... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by connorbd ( 151811 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @11:32AM (#2548526) Homepage
    I'd prefer a bit more in-depth reviewage, but I guess you can only do so many install/wipe cycles before you get bored. What would be really useful would be a page with a number of these reviews for smaller distros.

    /Brian
  • Why aren't any tiny Linux distros on it though?
    Hasn't anybody ever used Tom's Root Boot?
  • I took a look at the site [distrowatch.com], and quite frankly, I'm overwhelmed by the number of choices. I started using Linux quite recently, and if I'd known there were this many different distributions, I probably would have stayed away.


    When I started using Linux, I vaguely knew there were other distributions besides RedHat; but I knew that RedHat was the biggest, oldest, most successful Linux. So, why would anyone want to use any of the other distos? Do they seriously rival RedHat in terms of performance and ease-of-use. Do they have redhat package manager type innovation? Does anyone use them besides the people that develop them as vanity projects?


    If any of the other distros do have advantages over RedHat (which I kind of doubt), then I may have to reconsider my use of Linux. I mean, if you can't get all the benefits of Linux in one distribution, what's the point? I might as well switch to WinXP, where I know that the entire company is focused on one version of the OS, not dozens of competing distros. Isn't Linux kind of shooting itself in the foot with the distro system? Wouldn't cooperation be more efficient than competition?

    • Re:What's wrong with RedHat? (Score:4, Informative)

      by fault0 ( 514452 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @11:46AM (#2548557) Homepage Journal
      > If any of the other distros do have advantages over RedHat (which I kind of doubt).

      Yeah, many advantages. Depends on the distro tho, and what it's tailored for.

      some things include:

      1). better localization (i.e. asian distros for asian countries).
      2). much better package managment (i.e. apt/dpkg in debian and debian based distros).
      3). ease of use (well, this is subjective, but redhat is probably medium in ease of use, there are many distro's whose sole function is ease of use).
      4). background of users (i.e, slackware is liked by people with more UNIX background)
      5). choice of default packages (redhat ships default with GNOME, and many users prefer KDE, and (most) distros ship KDE default).
      6). number of packages available (e.g. debian probably has the most)
      7). security (i.e, some distros aim to be the most secure)
      8). stablity (i.e, Debian/stable)
      9). the newest pacakges ALL the TIME (i.e, Debian/unstable)

      if you're wondering, I use debian :-)

      • Re:What's wrong with RedHat? (Score:4, Informative)

        by mikec ( 7785 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @12:15PM (#2548616)
        I basically agree, but a minor quibble:

        Redhat does make Gnome the default, as opposed to KDE. But what that means is that during installation a screen comes up, with a bunch of choices. Gnome is initially checked. Changing the default is as simple as checking KDE. I hardly think this belongs in the top 10 reasons to choose a distribution.
        • You're right. However, some distros pay more attention to packaging their default desktop than the "alternatives". I'm not sure if RedHat is guilty of this, as I have not used it since 6.1 (when there was not a bunch of choices at install time).
      • OK, here's an honest question. In the past, I have used the three major rpm based distros (RH, SuSe, Drake) and therefore never had a chance to try apt. My question is, how is apt so much better than, say, Red Carpet on a RedHat box? It works out dependency issues, just like apt does. I'm not trying to start a flamewar here, I am just wondering if apt is really so much better/easier anymore...
        • My question is, how is apt so much better than, say, Red Carpet on a RedHat box? It works out dependency issues, just like apt does.
          The advantages are partly to do with technical differences, but perhaps mostly to do with packaging policy.

          For technical differences, see this article [kitenet.net]. One of the biggest ones is that debs have a higher degree of dependency granularity than rpms. As well as Depends: and Conflicts: they have Recommends: and Suggests:.

          Debian also has a carefully thought out packaging policy [debian.org]. And in Debian, everything is a true Debian package. There is no contrib. So a bug against the package is a bug in the system. This mindset makes a big difference to the quality of the distribution.

          You might also be interested in this discussion [debianplanet.org] on this theme.

        • If you notice vim isn't installed on a system, you just type 'apti vim' and a couple of seconds later you can use vim. (I have aliased apti='apt-get install')
      • There are also distros, that target specific hardware (i.e. Tiny Linux for older hardware) or a specific purpose (i.e. distros to turn your machine into a router etc). See the freshmeat.net list of distros.
      • 8). stablity (i.e, Debian/stable)
        9). the newest pacakges ALL the TIME (i.e, Debian/unstable)

        I'd like both, please. That rules out Debian. I'm looking to move off RedHat, and I'd love to try apt/get, but how long must I wait for a 2.4 kernel Debian/stable? I'd rather not apply an unoffical patch [fs.tum.de]

    • Re:What's wrong with RedHat? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Dionysus ( 12737 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @11:54AM (#2548574) Homepage
      Problem is how you look at it. You see Windows, and you see one company behind it. You look at Linux and you see lots of companies behind them, and think of it as dilution of focus.

      Thing is, it's the wrong comparison. Think of RedHat Linux, Debian GNU/Linux, Suse Linux as the equivalent of Windows. Linux, the brand, would be like wordprocessor. There are different wordprocessors out there (MSWord, WordPerfect, Lotus WordPro, StarWord etc), each made by a different company/group.

      So, you do have an entire company focusing on one version of the OS (RedHat focuses only on their RedHat Linux OS). When they add a feature that everybody like, other distributions add the feature (again like WPs... MS adds a feature, and it gets copied over to WordPerfect, WordPro etc).

      As to performance and ease-of-use, I would say Debian does rival RedHat in ease-of-use. Their package management system is far superior to the RPM system that most commercial dists. use.

      Think of it like this, Microsoft has had for the longest time, two distributions in their company (NT and 9x line). One company, two distributions. RedHat has always only had one distribution (RedHat Linux).

      Who is more focused?
      • I'd go with a different comparison. Different distros are like different PC vendors. Intel doesn't sell PCs (for the most part). Instead, many vendors assemble PCs, configure them, ship them, and support them, just like the distro providers do for Linux.

        In this analogy, asking what is wrong with RedHat is little like asking "What is wrong with Dell?" For many people, the answer would be "nothing," but the PC industry has definitely benefited from the competition without having to sacrifice compatibility. I think the same competition will keep the Linux distro providers focused on improving there distros. And that is a good thing.

    • Re:What's wrong with RedHat? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nolife ( 233813 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @12:03PM (#2548588) Homepage Journal
      I might as well switch to WinXP, where I know that the entire company is focused on one version of the OS, not dozens of competing distros. Isn't Linux kind of shooting itself in the foot with the distro system? Wouldn't cooperation be more efficient than competition?

      You seem to be missing the point of Linux... It is not just a company that decides what you need and you have to live with it. It is many companies and groups of people around the world that had a need for something that worked and produced it. Being open source, you are allowed to use it to your desire. There are two ways of looking at this. If everyone "worked" together on the same thing then unity would be an advantage for that one specific product, but what about the rest who need something slightly different? What if every developer that worked on a a mailer only did sendmail? What would happen to your choices of mailers? I do not see multiple choices as a disadvantage. I see it as more progress and more choices for myself. With XP or a one distribution world you would be STUCK with what you were given.
      The reason Linux is where is at today is because of the diversity.
    • RedHat was the biggest, oldest, most successful Linux

      Ah, no, of the distributions listed, Slackware is by far the oldest. Redhat is a relative newcomer.

      There is one older than Slackware, it started with a "Y", but I can not spell it. It is no longer maintainted.

      • Yggdrasil. Named after the "tree of the world" from Norse mythology.
      • Incorrect.

        Slackware was based on SLS, the very first ever Linux distribution. Before that, you grabbed the latest blazing 0.9whatever from Finland, then started with GCC 1.4 and other goodies from gnu.org. Spend some weeks compiling, and you could maybe boot Linux on your 386.
    • Extending that reasoning would raise the issue of why do so many companies make cars? Are all these different cars flawed? And each company makes so many different models. Is each model a different attempt to get it right? Why does each company need so many different types? Can't they just make a good car the first time? Obviously, with so many companies trying to make the same thing there are entirely too many choices. The market must not yet be mature, the products too complicated for any one company to attempt. You need to reconsider your use of cars. You should stick to trains.
      But don't fly. Same problem there. Too many companies trying to make the same thing, each making more than one. This can't allow them to provide the sort of product focus that should be incumbent upon a manufacturer of so complicated and dangerous a product. Do you really want to trust your valuble, irreplaceable life to a product where the manufacturer refuses to concentrate totally on the one model they expect you to trust your life to? Or the lives of those who then have to live under the flight path of these obviously dangerous machines? Thank God they don't make operating systems!
      Fortunately for you, there are safe havens! North Korea! China! Afghanistan! Quick, flee there while you can! Once there, you can relax knowing that the people in charge there are vigorously stamping out choice to protect you! Once there you can enjoy all the benefits of culture in just one culture. All the benefits of religion in just one religion (Afghanistan) or no religion if that offends you (China, North Korea). Once there, join the local party and learn the benefits of the efficiency of cooperation with the state. One country, one party, one people, one culture.
      Please try not to feel too much pity for those of us that don't have the courage to leave our multi-cultural, open society. We promise not to envy you too much.

    • What's wrong with Rocky Road? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10, 2001 @01:00PM (#2548705)
      I took a look at the local ice cream parlor, and quite frankly, I'm overwhelmed by the number of choices. I started eating ice cream quite recently, and if I'd known there were this many different flavors, I probably would have stayed away.

      When I started eating ice cream, I vaguely knew there were other flavors besides rocky road; but I knew that rocky road was the biggest, oldest, most successful ice cream. So, why would anyone want to eat any of the other flavors? Do they seriously rival rocky road in terms of tastiness and coldness. Do they have rocky road peanut type innovation? Does anyone eat them besides the people that make them as vanity projects?

      If any of the other flavors do have advantages over Rocky Road (which I kind of doubt), then I may have to reconsider my eating of ice cream. I mean, if I can't get all the benefits of ice cream in one flavor, what's the point? I might as well switch to water.

    • Microsoft has two lines of operating system: dos-95 line and NT line. Within either line, there is no clear choice of the "best" OS. Some people (me included), still use 95 because it's stabler and faster on our hardware. Some prefer ME over 98, others 98 over ME. Same for the NT line.

      The only big difference is marketing: MS touts XP and ME as _the_ OSes to get. However, they're an interested party - they want to sell their latest and greatest, and more importantly, push their technologies like .NET, and so forth.

      Now, with the linux, you got 4 "big" distros. RH, Mandrake, Debian and SUSE. I think in some expo SUSE or MDK was voted as the most popular, but RH is the oldest commercial offering.

      Here's a little round-up:

      RedHat - oldest commercial offering with most ties with traditional companies and I think a certification problem. I heard, though, that dir structure is a bit messy and new releases are sometimes rushed and hence are quite buggy. Usually a default newbie distro.

      SUSE - big in europe, getting in US too lately. At least as user-friendly as RH. Don't know much more about it. I think it uses RPM, like redhat.

      Mandrake - used to be based entirely on RH with a few minor tweaks but then branched into a separate distro. At least as user-friendly as RH, uses the same RPM system, a bit less buggy?

      Debian - "techies" distro. Less eye candy, more stability and security than other big 3. Apt-get package management is supposedly better and easier to use than RPM. It's not a commercial distro, it follows the same development pattern as Linux kernel itself. It does less hand-holding than other big 3 distros, so it can be intimidating to a new user. I think it also has more binary packages than any other distro.

      One thing that you're missing is that separate distros often share the development effort between each other, for instance they all use the same kernel, 3 out of 4 use the same package management scheme, most of the core things are the same, and so forth. Contrast this with MS and MacOS, who obviously can't share their internals.

      I think this scattering of distros is a very healthy thing. They compete, try to outdo each other, learn from each others mistakes, etc. Debian pitches to a distinctly different user base, just like with win95/NT lines.

      I must also say that I don't understand your logic. Your decision should be based on whichever OS is best. If it's windows, let it be windows, if it's debian, use it, if RH, use that. Uniqueness of said OS should not figure in your decision at all.

      Let me illustrate: let's say two guys come up to you and say "you must choose one box out of our offerings." One of them has one box, and the other has 10. If you choose to take the first guy's box, your pick is easier, if you take the 2nd's box, you have to choose out of ten. However, you have no idea what's in the boxes, the second guy's 10 boxes may each be filled with 100 dollar bills, while the other guy's one box might have horse manure in it or something. But here's what you're doing: you're picking the guy with one box just because he has one. That's plain silly.

      By the way, I don't claim to be very accurate in my roundup of distros. Read reviews or just pick one or two and try 'em. I don't think distro reviews like the one in the story are very useful, though - each distro is a very complex system with thousands of elements interacting, it may work great on one system with one user great but still be lousy on your system with your usage patterns.

      So, try one of them or not, but don't make up silly excuses like "There is only one", it's operating systems, not Highlander epos.

      • I don't claim to be very accurate in my roundup of distros

        Your round-up is much less accurate than the one this slashdot story is about, that's for certain. Others have already corrected your comments about Red Hat. I'll correct some of the other comments.

        SUSE - big in europe, getting in US too lately. At least as user-friendly as RH. Don't know much more about it. I think it uses RPM, like redhat.

        While SuSE does come with RPM (and apt-get for that matter), it uses its own YAST tool as the default package manager.

        Mandrake - used to be based entirely on RH with a few minor tweaks but then branched into a separate distro. At least as user-friendly as RH, uses the same RPM system, a bit less buggy?

        Mandrake is typically noted as being more user-friendly than Red Hat -- their installer can auto-configure some quite obscure stuff, and more buggy (already covered in other threads, but recent problems included the fonts, TuxRacer crashing under KDE, lockups of the drakconf if you couldn't do passive FTP, and so on).

    • Too funny how many have fallen hook line and sinker. You oughta check his user info, see how many other blatant trolls this guy's posted.

      Quit wasting your time.
    • I might as well switch to WinXP, where I know that the entire company is focused on one version of the OS...

      But would you install the corporate or consumer version? The corporate version seems to have less 'activation' issues, but could be harder to find. Or why not install Win2k, which seems more stable and better thought out than XP? But would you install the workstation or server version? The workstation version has some deliberate crippling in the TCP/IP (max 10 inbound connections per port, I think.) But maybe this can be fixed in the 'registry'. Remind me again, on which version (if any) of the OS is Microsoft focused?

      I think all the major commercial distributions are roughly equivalent. At a previous job I was forced to install Mandrake. Once it was up, there was no perceptible difference from RedHat, except that it added auto-indent to vi, which annoyed me until I managed to shut it off. As for the small distros, I have no idea and will probably never have time to play with them.

    • I mean, if you can't get all the benefits of Linux in one distribution, what's the point? I might as well switch to WinXP, where I know that the entire company is focused on one version of the OS, not dozens of competing distros.


      I recently started driving, and I'm apalled that there seem to be all sorts of motor vehicles out there. There are compact cars, electric cars, buses, semis with trailers -- what gives? If I can't get a single vehicle that combines all the advantages of every other motor vehicle put together, what good are these motor vehicles anyways? Maybe I should go back to horses! -- if I could decide between the Morgan and the Shetland pony.

  • As a Debian zealot, I claim that there's a sort of zen when using Debian. It has a sense of completeness, once installed, that I've never felt with another distribution. I like to think that if debian blatantly copied the RedHat or Mandrake installer program, then it would be the distribution to beat.
    • I too love debian but don't kid yourself it too has problems. My main gripe is the branches. The stable branch is too old to do anything with, even some of the testing apps are too old, and unstable lives up to it's name. I love the fact that the debian people think of the system in a wholistic way (the completeness as you say). I love the directory structure, I love how things just magically work together and of course I LOVE LOVE LOVE apt. Somewhere there has to be a solution to having a highly integrated system with the latest apps.

      PS. why LSB went with RPM and not apt will aways baffle me. Why not go with superior technology.

      PPS. To all the people about to post comments about Freebsd etc please don't bother. I know they exist and they are probably great too but we are talking about linux here.

      • The stable branch is too old to do anything with, even some of the testing apps are too old, and unstable lives up to it's name.

        Close on the first two, the last is not altogether accurate. I've found unstable to be no less stable than any of the latest editions of Redhat or Mandrake, and it is actually more cutting edge than those two. "unstable" means "changes often", it does not necessarily mean "buggy". Think about it, what branch do Debian developers use? Unstable. Do you think any bug is going to live long when it directly affects the maintainer of a package? I think not. If anything, testing (what some people erroneously see as a "safe bet") is the most bug-prone branch of debian, simply because if something goes wrong in testing, its fix goes into unstable and then must wait 2 weeks at best before moving into testing. Stick with what the developers themselves use and you won't go wrong. Any issues that crop up are usually fixed within hours, a day or two at the most.

        PS. why LSB went with RPM and not apt will aways baffle me.

        I don't see why. RPM is a packaging format, apt is a tool to manage Debian packages (or RPM packages, whatever floats your boat). dpkg would be a more worthy comparison (or even just .deb). I would say the LSB chose RPM simply because, aside from Slackware and Debian (AFAIK), everyone else uses it. Standards are about compatibility more than "superior technology".

        • I have had a lot of trouble with unstable lately. First apache-ssl was broken so I ditched that and now libapache-mod-ssl is broken. The fact is becasue packages don't get updated on a schedule you run into situations where apache has been incremented but none of the packages that depend on it have. So you get a broken system.

          Unstable is definately not for the faint of heart.
  • Linux from Scratch is really cool. I installed my own system from scratch in a couple of days. I would recommend a really fast machine though, the compiles take forever on an old 150 MHz laptop. For example, it took 8 hours to compile XFree86 4.1.0. A new 1 - 2 GHz system would cut that down to less than 1 hour.

  • lies (Score:3, Troll)

    by Blymie ( 231220 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @11:46AM (#2548558)
    Why do people lie so much? Take a look at the "The Linux Distribution Game" on this link. Look at the first paragraph. In the first paragraph, the author states that :

    Do everything you normally do with your computer and report back on your experience. You are not allowed to boot into Windows during that month." The friend called me 10 days later: "My Windows partition is gone!"

    Then, later in the same paragraph :

    "No, don't worry, I deleted it voluntarily..." He continued, his voice full of excitement: "I don't need Windows any more.....

    Then, still later....

    His final words were: "It is all in the way you work. Changing your routine is not easy at first, but after a month, I have adjusted completely. I am removing Windows from my computer!"

    So, let me get this straight. His friend called him in 10 days, saying he had deleted windows from his computer. Later on in the phone conversation, he then said that "... after a month .. removing windows from my computer...".

    You know, people are going to make up stories and post them on the web, and claim they are real, they should at least read their work to make sure it makes sense, and isn't filled with gibberish ravings. Its obvious this article isn't true, since the above statements aren't true. One of them have to be false. If one statement is false, than the article is false. What percentage of the article is false, I don't know, but at this point I have to throw it all away.

    Once someone lies in an article, you can't trust the rest of it. Expecially when it starts with lies.
    • Whoa, don't jump on that article just because something was formulated a little unclear.

      I'm sure the "final words" were meant as the final conclusion of his friend after the test month and NOT his final words on phone..
    • Often people say "x is gone" as a way of expressing their intention of getting rid of "x", even if they have not already done so. Sure, it's an abuse of language, but it happens.

      Also, it seems to me that the author was merely reporting the words of the friend. If anyone was lying (assuming no abuse of language as described above), it would be the friend and not the author (who would be only quoting a lie).

      Relax.

      • Guys, I think you (both previous posts) really need to READ the article before you make the above comments. No, he didn't say "x is gone" as a way of expressing intent, for further in the paragraph he said (and, as I quoted.. so you aren't reading what I'm saying even) :

        "No, don't worry, I deleted it voluntarily..."

        Now, people don't say "x is gone" and then say "I got rid of it vountarily" to express a future intent.

        Furthermore, the paragraph is written as if the entire paragraph is one phone call. Odd to say the least.

        I will tell you one thing. As to "reporting".. you try to flush out things that don't jive like this, and ask the person you are interviewing for clairty. If this person interviewed his friend, and then slapped it all down on a paragraph, than his proof reading should have uncovered such strangeness.

        Since it didn't, even at best his proof reading sucks, as I said before. What other things has he missed during proof reading, when such an obvious screwup makes it through? Technical mistakes? Others?
    • I caught that too. You're totally right, a person can't say "...I deleted [Windows] voluntarily..." and then later say "I am removing Windows from my computer!". It also seems that nobody replying to you caught it, or even grasps the fact that you are in fact correct. I personally can't see how they can still not understand the stark logic of this, but I guess some people miss things...?

      I also thought it was suprising that the author didn't catch it himself, since it definately detracts from his story's credibility. Oh well.

    • So, let me get this straight. His friend called him in 10 days, saying he had deleted windows from his computer. Later on in the phone conversation, he then said that "... after a month .. removing windows from my computer...".

      He deleted the partition after 10 days.

      Then he installed Windows again.

      Then, after 1 month, he was removing Windows again.

    • So, let me get this straight. His friend called him in 10 days, saying he had deleted windows from his computer. Later on in the phone conversation, he then said that "... after a month .. removing windows from my computer...".
      Or - he deleted his Windows partition after 10 days, but it took him 30 days to feel fully comfortable with the transition.

      Which is consistent with the psychological rule of thumb that (on averge) you have to do something for 30 times (or 30 days) before it becomes a habit. So if for several years the person booted into Windows every morning, it would take at least 30 boots for him to start losing the habitual memory of the process, and develop a comfort level with the new process.

      sPh

    • Professor Plum and Cournel Mustard deleted the partition in the library with the rope.
  • Phonics game, step aside. Theres a new penguin in town.

  • Choose freely!! (Score:1, Funny)

    by GdoL ( 460833 )
    Good Idea!

    Evolution trieves on diversity and the best way to choose is to know that there are a lot of distros, much of them so good that is very hard to choose one.

    I choose based on the great Icons of Mandrake ;-), but still want to experiment others.
    Some are better for their performancd on server others for the desktop others because...

    Hey, you can choose! And don't pay an extra for that (don't pay at all)!!
  • The article says that Red Hat managed to avoid the hype of the dot-com gold rush and build a normal business instead.

    Forgive my ignorance of Linux history, but I thought they were on a buying spree much like VA Ice Cream (or whatever they are these days.) Anyone know?

    --saint

  • Well and good (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Once upon a time, I seriously considered switching to Linux. I was running Windoze 98, and of course, as per tradition, it went down on me more often than a five-dollar whore.

    So I dutifully obtained SuSE 6.4, and installed Linux. To my dismay, it didn't much like my VidCard, and liked my monitor even less. I spent about 5 hours messing with proprietary SuSE monitor configuration tools, and typing 'startx' to the tune of lots of incomprehensible error messages.

    No help in the manuals, of course. I eventually got it working, only to realize that the only functional video player that came with the distro was shareware and required $$ and registration. And that I was somehow supposed to go online and find another, despite the fact that I had no clue how to get my modem configured.

    Cut to me installing OpenBSD off a boot floppy: detects netcard, autoconfigures using DHCP, offers me a list of download FTPs, and rips through the downloads, and installs. Crashing only once, while formatting my hard drive (so much for stability). It then proceeded to reboot once I typed 'reboot,' and plopped me back to a nice "#" prompt. Typing startx got me cryptic messages about ports and installing packages that were really already installed. Much fun. Never did get X working there...

    But now that I'm running Windows 2000, what incentive do I have to switch? It's stable, fast (mmm, 1 gig ram + 1.4 Tbird means no waiting!), and plays ALL of my pr0n. And my incentive to switch to a system where I spend most of my time wondering why I'm using ext3 and not ReiserFS or XFS would be?
  • Go with FreeBSD and you'll never have to worry about which distro you use.

    * Dependencies are handled automagically
    * you can update the entire source tree with cvsup
    * the ports collection can't be beat by any distro
    * the firewalls are easy to configure and set up
    * IPSEC VPNs with racoon (in ports) works great
    * Setting Securelevel will protect you in ways you haven't thought of yet in linux
    * There is so much more automation in FreeBSD that makes it much friendlier to use than any linux distro

    Once you use FreeBSD you'll never go back to linux again.
    • Heh. I use FreeBSD, but I am doing Linux again now. I don't know why - I think it is because the 4.x releases just don't have the same feel as the 3.x releases.

      Still use FreeBSD on the server though. Wouldn't use anything else.

      Oh. Java support. I like to tinker a lot in Java, so FreeBSDs abysmal support for it means that it gets overlooked in favour of Linux for my desktop. I use Mandrake Linux 8.1 at the moment, which is pretty good overall.

      • Abysmal support? At best, I tinker too, but I've never had an issue with the native JDK1.3.1 [freebsd.org] for FreeBSD. It runs Forte, Limewire, etc. pretty well (can't vouch for more serious apps). One issue is that there is no native plugin for Mozilla. Maybe that's your beef? If so, I heartily agree.

        • Re:Forget distributions (Score:2, Informative)

          by hattig ( 47930 )
          Erm, when I say tinker, I mean that my job is a Java programmer, and threads etc just completely die badly with FreeBSD. Locks that are as long as a threads life!

          Emulated JDK (IBM) is not an option, and yes, it was tested.

          So (RH) Linux was chosen, and rightly so for this appliance.

          Hopefully one day FreeBSD will haev a good native JDK that is as stable and reliable as whatever the latest Linux JDK is at that time. Or we will rewrite the entire thing in C, in which case we will use FreeBSD.

          And evolution. If that app ever works in FreeBSD it will be a miracle. At least KMail works, as does Mozilla Mail, and both are fine (small/fast vs large/slow though).

    • If I could get hardware accelerated 3D, as well as high quality video recording, working under FreeBSD, I'd switch. Till then, I won't be making that switch.

      Dinivin

    • Re:Forget distributions (Score:4, Informative)

      by entrox ( 266621 ) <slashdot@@@entrox...org> on Saturday November 10, 2001 @12:42PM (#2548663) Homepage
      Yes, FreeBSD is a very nice OS and I'm using it right now, BUT it isn't THAT much better.

      Let me explain: I've been using Debian Linux for 3 years now and got fed up by constant instabilities in the linux kernel (VM) and the package chaos. At the end I had like 150 packages installed, half of them being some obscure library on which some obscure package I needed depended. It worked, but it wasn't nice. So I gave FreeBSD a try. My Friend is a FreeBSD advocate (or should that be zealot) and he finally convinced me of FreeBSD. I backed up some data, wiped the discs and installed. It worked and after some adjustments I was feeling right at home.

      BUT...

      Many features that are advocated by advocates (or zealots..) weren't relevant to me or just plainly don't work.

      - XFree86 DRI support doesn't work if you don't install X11 CVS. So no ports for this.

      - Sound (emu10k) would often not work, needing a few reboots (mind you.. this never happened with Linux, so it shouldn't be a hardware issue).

      - Ports would often not fetch or build, because they depend on some other port with a specific version, which in turn isn't available anymore.

      - Securelevels are nice, but as soon as you rise em one above the lowest you cannot start X anymore, so this gets ruled out for workstations.

      - CVSupping the source is nice, but what for? I got the same with apt-get upgrade and it finished faster.

      - Compiling from source is nice, but I didn't see any improvements over binary packages.

      I could go on for a while now..

      Bottom line is: FreeBSD is a nice OS and I like it, but it isn't that great compared to e.g. Debian. Both have their shortcomings and had I known about them beforehand, I might have not switched.

      I'm writing this to contrast the "FreeBSD is soooo much superior to Linux"-posters and give people a little less biased picture from my experience with BSD.
      • I don't think it is worth using FreeBSD without using the cvsup and compiling stuff instead of using packages. Of course compiling all this stuff for a desktop system takes a lot of time. I think FreeBSD rocks for servers but if you are going to use it on your desktop be prepared for lengthy compiles (mozilla, xfree86, etc). I haven't tried using it on my desktop yet (I use Debian unstable at the moment) but I'm planning on trying it soon. I know FreeBSD has packages but they just aren't the same...

        Also your problem with the port files not existing on archives is that your ports was not up to date. You need to update it using cvsup (the only package I have installed on my system, haven't compiled it yet).
        • Here is a step by step on cvsup'ing ports:

          - copy /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile to somewhere nice (I put it in /etc)
          - edit ports-supfile with a valid cvsup host (I use cvsup11.freebsd.org), choose what you want, I got rid of all the foreign language and desktop stuff but you could just do ports-all
          - cvsup -s -z /etc/ports-supfile

          Check out portupgrade for a nice handy tool and consider updating your system with stable-supfile and the kernel & world builds.
        • Well, from former experiences with debian this was the FIRST thing I did. I wrote a supfile, added it to /etc/make.conf and ran 'make update', but this problem remained for about 3 weeks and was resolved only recently. I wanted to compile WindowMaker 0.70.0 and it depends on gettext-0.10.38. Problem was, that not one server specified in the ports Makefile had this file (they all were at 0.10.39 as this is a development version).

          Further I didn't mean to say anything against cvsup or ports as I'm using them and I am happy. I just wanted to point out, that they aren't flawless and have problems from time to time just like their package equivalents in Linux distros.

          I guess I'm just fed up with people, who tell you about the superiority of FreeBSD, but never admit any problems it may have.
          • Good points. I wasn't sure if you had cvsup'ed it so I thought I'd point it out. I too had a problem with ports - when I wanted to make the port for portupgrade it would die because the ruby port had some sort of problem. It took a week or so until it worked so I agree that this system isn't faultless but I don't think any are. Basically I'm interested in the least amount of maintenance for a server and so far FreeBSD seems to be it (not counting OpenBSD/NetBSD)...
          • I guess you never read your /etc/defaults/make.conf and edited the lines:
            MASTER_SITE_BACKUP?= \
            ftp://ftp5.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles /${DIST_SUBDIR}/

            and
            MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE?= ${MASTER_SITE_BACKUP}

            This will allow you to get all your stuff from one mirror.
      • I think it all depends on what you want to do, in regards to what type of UNIX or pseudo-UNIX (linux) you want to use. If you need support for all the latest hardware and oddball stuff, linux is your best bet. If you want to play games, linux is your best bet, although I know several people that successfully run games on FreeBSD, albeit in linux-compat mode.

        I still haven't been able to get my Voodoo 5 working under X, except in 640x480x8bbp (yuck), but I think that's more of an issue with XF86Free...

        I used all the major versions of linux at one point, and certain things didn't work with each distro (I'll not go into detail here). I ended up with Libranet (Debian) and I was pretty happy with it until I tried to upgrade Netscape one day with apt-get and it totally hosed my system.

        That's when I decided to go with BSD. I installed OpenBSD as a desktop and ran it for many months with nary an issue, I even upgraded it and got X 4.x.x running without too much trouble (although it did seem like a PITA at the time). The only reason I quit running OpenBSD as a desktop was because of not enough software in ports.

        I've run several FreeBSD machines and, compared to linux, they're a dream to install, configure and maintain. I also run a few NetBSD machines, which I enjoy because it's a bit more challenging to get up and running, but then it's almost as easy as FreeBSD to maintain.

        I really hated compiling new kernels in linux; it's too easy with *BSD. I found Slackware (BSD-lite as I like to call it) and Debian to be good primers for *BSD, so I don't totally discount linux; it's a good learning experience.

        However, I won't go back to linux as my main operating system. Ever. *BSD is that good. Sure, I may not be able to play games, but I have plenty of other stuff to keep me busy, like studying for various certifications (Solaris, HP-UX, Cisco) and playing with old Sun, HP and Cisco hardware...

        entrox: sounds like you need to cvsup those ports, buddy! ;)

    • Re:Forget distributions (Score:5, Informative)

      by bconway ( 63464 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @12:48PM (#2548681) Homepage
      * the ports collection can't be beat by any distro

      Actually, it can very easily be beat by many distros. Ports is nice if you're installing a program from scratch and leaving it, but if you update your ports collection, there's no method to update a single package! You need to uninstall every package that depends on the one you're trying to upgrade by hand, then install all of them AGAIN through ports. Until there's a 'make update' that updates a single package (or a package and everything that depends on it) after updating the ports tree, it won't be nearly as flexible as a simple 'rpm -Fvh file.rpm' or the apt-get equivalent.
      • man portupgrade

        This utility rocks for upgrading ALL the installed ports.
      • Ports is nice if you're installing a program from scratch and leaving it, but if you update your ports collection, there's no method to update a single package! You need to uninstall every package that depends on the one you're trying to upgrade by hand, then install all of them AGAIN through ports.
        I used to think this, too, but apparently within the past couple of years it has become completely untrue. There is a really nifty utility for FreeBSD called portupgrade [freebsd.org] which does exactly what you're complaining about. Usage is "portupgrade [portname]". It settles dependencies, yadda, yadda, yadda. The biggest issue I had when trying it out was my earlier brain-dead upgrading of ports had left my package database inconsistent. Luckily there are utilities that help you fix that too.

    • Re:Forget distributions (Score:2, Insightful)

      by pbryan ( 83482 )
      Go with FreeBSD and you'll never have to worry about which distro you use.

      Ahem, isn't FreeBSD a distribution based on BSD?
      • Ahem, isn't FreeBSD a distribution based on BSD?
        Not really, since in general Linux distributions use a more-or-less unmodified Linux kernel. There is no working "BSD" kernel, and even if there were, the FreeBSD project's kernel will naturally be radically different from it, since BSD ran on now-defunct hardware. In short, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and FreeBSD are not "distributions" of BSD since they all write their own kernels and their own userlands to make use of these kernels. They are all decidely "BSD-ish," but we don't call Ultrix a distribution of SysV, do we?

  • Variety is the spice of life? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by imrdkl ( 302224 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @12:09PM (#2548605) Homepage Journal
    I'm not sure this applies to the average person who is attempting to decide which Linux to install and use, but it's interesting to see a few of them evaluated from a dummied-down perspective. I guess a few of these may be on their way out as viable commercial alternatives, but from the response we saw [slashdot.org] on Slackware's [slackware.org] demise (not), there seems to be no lack of friendly competition and enticements.
  • Slackware has a logo??!

    As a one-time Slackware user, I can assure you that having a logo goes against everything that Slackware stands for. It must be a fake!

  • How is the LSB progressing? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 10Ghz ( 453478 ) on Saturday November 10, 2001 @12:26PM (#2548634)
    Partly off-topic I guess but...

    What's the situation with Linux Standards Base? Is any of the distros 100% compatible? Having a single standard would make life whole lot easier for users and for companies. For example: NVIDIA offers Linux-drivers for their cards. In their download-page there are packages for just about every major distro there is. It causes extra hassle for them. And I guess the situation is more or less similar for other companies as well.

    How long will it be untill we start to see software that is not offered in several packages (for each distro), but in one package with instructions "this package will install on a LSB-compliant distribution"?
    • Well, considering that the LSB is commonly, yet jokingly referred to as the RSB (Redhat Standards Base)... I would have to say that LSB isn't doing too well. I mean, why don't they just cut to the chase and have the LSB state that "anything Redhat does is the standard"? Are we to go from one corporation controlling our standards (MS) to another (Redhat)?
    • What's the situation with Linux Standards Base? Is any of the distros 100% compatible?

      Well, I won't guarantee 100% compatibility, but I will say that after installing the new SuSE 7.3, I noticed the filesystem had been revamped. There were some readme files in places where I was looking for things, so I read through them, and each said the same thing: "these files are now found in /etc/foo (or wherever), for LSB compatibility."

      The outside of the SuSE box also says "LSB compatibility" but I don't know if that's 100%. In any case, at least one distro is trying.

  • SID does not mean 'Still In Development'.

    Sid is a character from toy story... the boy next door who destroyed toys.

    SID is the name given to the 'testing' distribution.. which is NOT necessarily the 'next' version.

    From the FAQ: "It is a special distribution for architectures which haven't yet been released for the first time"

    • No, no no. (Score:2, Informative)

      by astyanax ( 8365 )
      Sid is unstable, woody is testing. Sid will always be unstable, and never be released. New testing branches will be released as the previous one stabilizes. I have to agree I didn't think sid stood for anything, but it's certainly a nice backronym =)
      • Once Woody becomes the stable, official latest version of Debian, won't Sid move to testing and a new nickname for unstable be agreed upon?

        I was under the impression that the labels stable, testing and unstable referred to three different current stages of the Debian release cycle, while the labels Potato, Woody, and Sid referred to specific targeted releases.

  • I've been running Mandrake for some time (with no
    Winblowz partition), and while I initially loved
    it, I am starting to get a bit frustrated by the
    fact that it is rather hard to upgrade a particular piece of the distribution (say KDE, XFree, or whatever), without upgrading the entire
    distribution. It seems that each new version
    uses a completely different compiler, and every program is patched like crazy, so that rpm's for
    one version of the distribution, don't work for
    another.

    You could of course, upgrade a particular piece
    of software by compiling from source, but often
    I find that this results in craziness because the
    distribution has done some non-standard things.

    It also seems that Redhat is falling into this
    behaviour, but would be interested in other people's experience. I kinda wish they would just go slower, and use more standard compilers
    and stop extra-patching every program.

    I dunno, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but I think you should just need to
    install a distro once, and then from then on,
    you should be able to do kernel upgrades, etc.
    (when you really need to)
    without having to upgrade the whole distro.

    I'm not saying you can't do this, but it seems
    that it is becoming harder and harder to do.

    I also find that Mandrake is getting a bit too Windowz-esque. I don't mind it if they dumb things down and automate certain configurations,
    as long as they still leave room for people to hack and configure things themselves.

    But sometimes I find that Mandrake makes it hard to do the configuration manually. Their
    crazy menuing system was one example. And their
    kernel (at least in 7.0) did not even automatically come with
    the original .config file).

    • Re:continually upgrading and dumbing down (Score:5, Interesting)

      by cymen ( 8178 ) <cymenvig@gmail. c o m> on Saturday November 10, 2001 @01:02PM (#2548711) Homepage
      I dunno, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but I think you should just need to install a distro once, and then from then on, you should be able to do kernel upgrades, etc. (when you really need to) without having to upgrade the whole distro.

      Debian is very close to this. Unfortunately the extremely slow release schedule is a major annoyance with Debian. If you run testing or unstable on your desktop machine you should be happy with relatively recent versions of everything. If you run stable you'll find rather old versions of everything patched to hell. Maybe I'm just disillusioned but Debian just doesn't cut it for a server OS. I love the ease of upgrading but using Apache 1.2.9 and similarly outdated releases of mysql, postgresql, and php4 is a major annoyance. I could build the packages myself but there goes the whole ease of use... So for my desktops and non-production servers I run Debian unstable or testing but on my production servers I'm planning on moving 100% to FreeBSD. I don't think any Linux distribution has the ease of use and updating while using up to date software that FreeBSD has with the ports system. Some people were working on copying the FreeBSD system while using the Linux kernel (it was a debian group) but I don't think they are very active...

      Ports + CVS update + linux kernel would be awesome...
  • I sure wish that sites like this were around a couple of years ago...

    I have used Linux off and on for about 2 yrs now, first dual-booting, then just Linux, then just Windows, and now back to Linux again.

    My roommate is a big Red Hat guy, and that is what I used before, RH 6.0-7.1. Now that I am interested in Linux, but suedo capable of doing some things without help, I have switched. I am now using Linux Mandrake 8.1. I installed it myself, botched it up somehow the first time, re-did it, and have been happy since. Once I get Q3A working, I will be exstatic!

    Through all of this, the effort has been worth it, although, of course, it is now much easier to get going on your own without the help of a guru!
  • I really thought this was a nice page. I found an old pentium lying around somewhere, and I was thinking of installing Linux on it just to test it out (hanging around Slashdot, you just have to eventually...) so I'm glad I saw this before I tried anything.
  • This coming from a Debian user... Gentoo Linux's [distrowatch.com] new package management system sets it apart from the others.
    Unlike other distros, Gentoo Linux has an advanced package management system called Portage. Portage is a true ports system in the tradition of BSD ports, but is Python-based and sports a number of advanced features including dependencies, fine-grained package management, "fake" (OpenBSD-style) installs, safe unmerging, system profiles, virtual packages, config file management, and more.

    If you have a fast cpu, lots of ram and disk space, Gentoo seems like a good fit. However, Debian's apt-get seems like the best fit for slower resource restrained systems.
  • They need a placeholder for all these bootable live cdroms I keep on seeing everywhere now. They are great for quick recovery jobs, and its always handy to have a linux distro that fits in your wallet.

    LBT from Linuxcare [linuxcare.com]
    LNX-BBC [lnx-bbc.org]
    Portable Linux Auditing CD [sf.net]

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