why your distro sucks

[Craig White]

I am not gonna mention any names but I find some of the bludgeoning that
goes on with some people's opinion often going over the top.

I have used Redhat since 5.2 (but I think 6.0 had already been released)
and it was 6.1 or 6.2 by the time I was starting to understand what it
was that I was looking at. My usage at that time was primarily as a
firewall / mail /webserver for Macintosh & Windows networks.

To this point, I have always used Redhat as my distro, sendmail as my
MTA, UW-IMAP as my pop/imap server, wu-ftpd as the ftp daemon etc. 

Perhaps my ignorance has been the cause of my bliss but the stuff has
always worked. Yes, RH 6.1's sendmail allowed open mail relay but I
learned to close it. Yes, I had some boxes hacked into way back when but
it was my ignorance on a proper firewall and I learned ipchains very
well. While I can't make heads or tails of the sendmail rulesets, I
found out, I didn't have to...I only needed to know how to use the
sendmail.mc file and the m4 utility and how to masquerade a domain, how
to accept mail for a domain, use authentication for sending and how to
create aliases. I also figured out how to chroot a 'unix user' in
wu-ftpd and uw-imap has never failed me.

Since my experience with linux has only been for maybe 3 1/2 years, I
don't have any knowledge of sendmail/uw-imap/wu-ftpd frailties of the
past...I only know that these packages have been rock solid for 3 1/2
years now...have worked day in/day out and I actually learned how to
configure them and life is good. I'm getting pretty good at this
stuff...I even have been trying to help the guy with Mandrake even
though I have never seen a computer running Mandrake.

I am certain that the opinion is held by many knowledgable circles,
there are better than sendmail/uw-imap/wu-ftpd and Redhat. 

My point is that what purpose does it serve to berate me or anyone else
for using Redhat or any of these packages? Why isn't it obvious that
those who gently suggest that there may be a better way appear to be
more knowledgable than those who can't pass up an opportunity to suggest
that you are stupid for using them. It reminds me of stupid Macintosh
users that wanted to grab some elitist high ground because of the
computer that they were using.

I can tell you this...using Redhat has meant that I don't have to
educate my customers on why I'm using debian which they have never heard
of instead of Redhat which they have.

I will install debian soon enough...if not at the non-profit, certainly
on the next computer for my own personal use. But Redhat has been a
tremendous asset to the open source / free software community,
especially when breaking into the corporate offices as the first wave of
free software in the Microsoft stranglehold.

My suggestion...if you prefer one package over another or one distro
over another and you don't have the time and/or energy to actually say
why, then just say that this is what you prefer. If you feel the need to
trample the stuff that is working fine for me, you should know that I
will lose some respect for your opinion.

Craig