To clarify, the reason I switched from Red Hat to SuSE:
http://fedora.redhat.com/about/#support
Fedora is not supported, SuSE is. For some organizations that's an
issue. For organizations I figured I'd be working for, I figured that
would be an issue. I like that with SuSE I can download the actual
code that a potential client organization might well be running. With
Fedora/RHEL this is not the case. Fedora is similar to RHEL, as is
CentOS. But, they are not the compiled-by-Red-Hat-real-deal binaries.
And, I just don't like how they built their business making the
distro easily available to people, and then changed the rules in the
middle of the game.
At any rate, that is why I made my personal choice to switch from Red
Hat 9 to SuSE. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who are
very happy with Fedora and CentOS. :)
-Erik
On 5/13/05, Joseph Sinclair <
plug-discuss@stcaz.net> wrote:
> > I've used Suse, Fedora Core, Debian Sarge, Slackware, Knoppix, Simply Mepis, and Ubuntu. All of this on an AMD Athlon-64 system. So far, Ubuntu is the only 64-bit distribution that hasn't had some issue or other serious enough to
> drive me nuts. Suse's YAST is absolutely beautiful for configuration after the system's up and running, and I wish someone would port it (or at least the good parts) to Debian. For installing software, however, I've found that synaptic
> on Ubuntu is actually easier that YAST2, and there are a lot more packages available. Suse and Fedora both have issues with some multimedia playback, because the default repositories won't carry software that might have patent
> problems. Suse is really bad about slightly changing common software for their environment (cdrecord has the buffer-size option disabled, and is broken in a couple of other ways, for instance). Knoppix has problems being an installed
> distribution, and things don't always update without problems. Simply Mepis is great as a set-it-and-forget-it distro, but it's often a little behind on updates, and adding something not in their main repository can be a real pain, especially
> if you have compile from source. Slackware is the other distro I haven't had any problems with, but it's command-line focus just took too much work for me to use it as my main system. Ubuntu and Sarge are pretty similar, except
> Sarge was a lot harder to install, and had some stability problems on the AMD64 architecture when I used it, and Ubuntu had a much better set of choices made for what was installed by default (about the only thing I've added is
> development tools and KDE so I could run K3B). Ubuntu has one thing that can cause problems, which is the 2 "desktop" meta packages they use (ubuntu-desktop and kubuntu-desktop). You'll want to "apt-get remove" those two right
> after they're installed, as the packages themselves don't install anything, they just pull in a stack of dependencies, and the kubuntu-desktop, especially, causes a conflict with important security updates that synaptic cannot resolve for
> some reason. Don't try to use synaptic to remove those packages, by the way, synaptic tries to remove a bunch of extra stuff, whereas the command-line apt-get just removes the meta-package itself, and leaves it's dependency tree
> installed.
>
> ==Joseph++
>
> Victor Odhner wrote:
> > In the "fixing Firefox" thread, Eric Bixby wrote:
> >> Sorry. Somehow, I got it in my head that the
> >> problem was the executable, itself... If it's
> >> your profile, I'll have to defer to someone
> >> who's spent more time horsing around with
> >> such things. :)
> >
> > On a similar thread, Craig White wrote:
> >> It is how we deal with that lack of knowledge that
> >> differentiates us.
> >>
> >> I would suggest reading the book 'Zen and the Art
> >> of Motorcycle Maintenance' as it covers this subject
> >> rather thoroughly.
> >>
> >> Basically, you have to make a decision on what type
> >> of user you wish to be...
> >
> > This is a wake-up call for me.
> >
> > I'm an experienced Unix developer. By day, and
> > sometimes into the evening, I am mired down in
> > something over two million lines of complex C code,
> > performing diagnosis and remediation, and
> > participating in all sorts of talk on system
> > architecture. Building a release of this software
> > is a black art. Starting it up, shutting it down
> > and controlling the debug tools is a whole specialty
> > in itself.
> >
> > At work, I also use a Windows XP desktop where I can
> > just install new apps and have them right there at
> > my fingertips without diverting my attention from
> > my main task. This is just a tool. I use it.
> >
> > By night, I would like to use Linux. But my "parts
> > is parts" view of the *nix world leads me to want to
> > just plug things in and configure them. It also
> > makes me want to install distribution "A" here, and
> > "B" there, and be able to experiment with each
> > without effectively reverting to my day job.
> >
> > Frankly, until Craig's comment, I was going on the
> > very naive assumption that there was some level of
> > commonality and cooperation among the user interface
> > efforts in the Linux world. Thinking back, I remember
> > all these discussions about the various distros and
> > window managers, but failed to get deeply enough into
> > them to realize that each of them is *exactly* like
> > my day job: you have to pick your distro and then
> > become a wizard at it. The Windows world is what it
> > is because of standardization: Even if an app is
> > Free Software, its Windows version is likely to just
> > plug and play, because it is installed into a known
> > environment.
> >
> > My son is a Unix administrator and security guru.
> > At home, he loves his highest-end Mac with OS X
> > because he never has to lift the hood -- it just
> > works. He doesn't have to *work* at home, he can
> > just play with his pictures and music and gaming
> > systems, and focus his technical attention on those
> > areas.
> >
> > So, I'm beginning to get it. If I just want to be
> > a Linux *user*, not a Linux *hacker*, then I must
> > choose a distro and make it my home.
> >
> > What is the closest thing, in the Linux world, to a
> > distro that just works, where new releases of apps
> > are available promptly and just fall into place?
> > I'm enough of a hacker to get the results I want
> > in specific cases, and to build special tools to
> > do non-standard things; but I don't want every
> > install, and every update, to become that kind of
> > exercise.
> >
> > I'm sure that Linspire would *not* suit me. Maybe
> > Gentoo, which I've been thinking about, is more on
> > target. I'm not in a hurry, I can wait for things
> > to compile while I'm off at work ...
> >
> > ... speaking of which, it's time to make the donuts.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Vic
> >
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