Introductions

[Craig White]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: plug-discuss-admin@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> [mailto:plug-discuss-admin@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us]On Behalf Of Garrett
> Ellis
> Sent: Friday, July 20, 2001 6:15 AM
> To: 'plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us'
> Subject: RE: Introductions
>
>
> Debian 2.2r3's installer runs very smoothly. All that's required of the
> user is to read what's on the screen before pressing enter a
> zillion times
> like your everyday impatient Windows user. And if someone isn't
> willing and
> understanding that they will be learning a brand new system when
> they first
> switch to linux, then that person should think twice about what they're
> doing and just stick with their Windows install.
>
> I think the best way to say it is, "Debian is not for beginners who are
> expecting Linux to be just like Windows". It could truthfully be
> said that
> if someone wants to learn Linux to be an effective sysadmin/technician,
> they should start with Debian. Debian makes you do a lot of
> things manually
> and as a result, you learn more about how the system works without having
> it wrapped up in pretty conf scripts. The *configurator scripts are there
> for the people that don't know what they are doing (nothing wrong with
> ignorance), and the sysadmin is there for when those scripts fail to do
> their job. "Oh no! Xconfigurator doesn't work! Whatever shall I do?
> Wherever shall I go?" If you want to be one of the people that fixes that
> and does it well, I believe you should start with Debian.
>
> If you want to have Linux just for playing around or maybe write a bit of
> code, or just so you can tell your friends how much of a hax0r you are
> because you discovered the NETCONF and set up your linux box without any
> help from anyone, then you should use Mandrake or RedHat. Those
> distributions seem targeted for (and created by.. <g>) those who really
> don't know too much about Linux and have little to no desire to learn.
>
> Other than that, and my continuing praise for Debian's speed,
> reliability,
> and consistency across distributions, I will cease contributing to the
> distribution argument.
>
---------
I think much too much is being made about the differences between distro's.
I think they all are capable of doing the same things but some are
'packaged' better for servers, some are packaged better for workstations,
some are packaged for only specific hardware and some have greater strengths
for geographical region/language.

It would seem that it is more important to learn one system very well than
to charge ahead and sample a bunch of them. It would also seem to be
instructive to sample a BSD distro.

Craig