Re: distros

["Tim R. Geier" <tim@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Apr 28, 2000 at 11:23:03AM -0400, t.bedlam wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 28, 2000 at 08:48:58AM -0400, Tim R. Geier was only 
>    escaped alone to tell thee:
> 
> > Very religious is an understatement =|  In my experience, most Debian
> > users are very fanatical about their distro and are quick to criticize you
> > if you don't conform to their worldview (let's just say I've had some bad
> > experiences along those lines lately)  Me, I've been a Slack man for years
> > (versions 2 something to 7) but I don't burst into flames if I use (or see
> > someone else use) another distro..find out what's best for you and go with
> > it.
> 
> Understatements: oh, yes. I agree. But zealots, the 1% of the time they can
> be convinced to do something practical, tend to do it up beyond right. :)
> What do you think of Slackware as opposed to Red Hat or Debian? I mean, can
> you think of any experiences that illustrate any significant differences?
> I have only the one computer, else I'd just install them one after another.

Well, from the beginning, slackware has always been totally customizable, there
are no gui tools included to administrate and configure your system, so you
learn to do everything by hand (RTFM'ing is mandatory)  I also prefer slack's
setup as the packages are grouped by category, for instance, I'll never use
TeX, and Slackware packages that under the "T" series, thus, I don't install
the T series and I never have to worry about it.  There's also the "E" series
for Emacs that I also don't touch ;)  Slack 7 does includes a rpm package and
the conversion utility rpm2tgz, but in previous versions, you had to really
futz around to get rpm's working with slack (and even now, I'd call it iffy at
best , it's better to get the slack package or compile from source)  The slack
packaging system isn't quite `up there', I'll admit, but it's logical and wide
open; you can easily see what's in every package and where it's going to go.

Dependencies aren't strictly enforced, and while this is good if you like
having that kind of power, it can also break existing packages (Slack assumes
you know what you're doing)  And when it comes time to remove packages, you can
get a preview of what files and directories are exactly going to be removed, so
you can clear out anything you want to keep before issuing the "removepkg".
Init-wise, it's BSD-style, though there is a package in 7 that'll put in a
pseudo-SysV init structure for packages that require them (also known as Red
Hat-only)  In terms of number of packages, no, Slack doesn't have the 1000's
that other distros feature, but I've gotten along fine going from Slack's base
install and adding/compiling packages, which goes along with Slack's philosophy
(from my perspective, anyway) 

I don't mind running Red Hat as a server, though the install can be a pain,
once it's up and running (and you've closed all unneeded ports, installed ssh,
etc.) it'll run very solid.  I'm used to it by now, but it definitely `feels'
different than slackware or a *BSD.  I don't have much experience at all with
Debian (saw it in college during OS class, it looked all right, but I didn't
see anything really special about it)  Yes, I've heard of and know about the
debian package system that reminds me a lot of *BSD ports, but what else is
there that makes it `good' besides tons of packages and a "If it's not Free,
we're not including it" perspective?

> 
> -- 
> bedlam@concentric.net || http://www.concentric.net/~bedlam

-- 
Tim R. Geier
Modineer IT