Re: Informal Distribution Survey

[Bruce Smith <bruce@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> After reading the e-mails about the Linux ICQ like apps and seeing the
> subject matter change to distribution questions, I would like to find out
> what other KLUGers are using for their Linux systems.  My idea is not to
> start (another) my distribution is better than yours argument.  Instead I
> am interested in seeing what we all are using and how we like it.
> 
> I currently use Slackware on all my machines at work and home (about 15
> machines).  It works very nicely for me.  The installation is quick and
> painless for what I'm looking to do with it.  One of my co-workers got Red
> Hat running on an Alpha machine and another got MKLinux running on a
> Macintosh.
> 
> I have heard Red Hat and SuSE both mentioned frequently within the KLUG.
> Are there any others?  Anyone played with Debian? Caldera? Extreme Linux?
> 

I first started with Linux because I was looking for an inexpensive
way to run Unix at home, since I admin HP-UX at work.  My first 
distribution was Yggdrasil with the 1.0 kernels.  I also had some
internesting experences with the 1.1 (development) kernels before
I learned the version number scheme, and what kernels were considered
to be stable.  (and which weren't stable :)  But that's another story.

Sometime later I upgraded to Slackware 3.0, downloaded entirely from 
the internet (no CD or diskettes). 

I then went to a "roll your own" version, as I manually upgraded
myself from a.out to ELF.  An experence I'd NOT care to repeat.  :{)

I soon found "rolling my own Linux" can be very time consuming, so 
I decided to go back to a distribution.  A friend of mine always
spoke highly of Redhat, so I Purchased the current version, which
was 4.2 at that time.  The best thing about Redhat is RPM.  I'll
never go back to tar files after my experence "rolling my own".
IMHO, RPM is one of the best things that's ever happened to Linux.

I also have a copy of SuSE 5.2.  There are many things I like better
about SuSE than Redhat.  However I don't currently plan on switching 
because SuSE doesn't seem to have the same level of support as Redhat.
I only base this on the number of updates posted to Redhat's FTP 
site compared to the number of updates on SuSE's FTP site.
(BTW, SuSE is also RPM based, or I'd never even consider it)

Now I run Redhat (5.0 and 5.1) Linux on 2 home PC's, 2 Laptops, 
and about 4 PC's at work (including the KLUG web server).
I also own Applixware and Motif as my only purchased applications.

Currently, most of our mission critical applications at work are 
based on HP-UX, but I can see some of that slowly shifting to 
Linux in the future to reduce cost and save time admin'ing them.

I haven't looked at Slackware since 3.0.  Are they using RPM now, 
or are they still ".tgz" (tar) based?

--------------------------------------------
Bruce Smith                bruce@armintl.com
System Administrator / Network Administrator
Armstrong International, Inc.
Three Rivers, Michigan  49093  USA
http://www.armstrong-intl.com/
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