Circular arguments (was:RE: [ILUG] Re: slackware (was: Esat ADSL))

[Dermot Daly]

Guys,
Everyone can spend days saying what distro is better than others, etc.
This generates a lot of discussion without ever reaching conclusion.

Here's a suggestion:  How about someone who has knowledge of a number of
distros (this is where I bow out) set up a mini "interest group" who
could then publish a "features matrix" of the various distros up on the
linux.ie website.  

Something along the lines of 
Good For Learning: Slackware, Debian...etc.
Good For Desktop: Red Hat, Lycoris...etc.

Any takers ?

It should at least cut down on this (rather long) thread.

Cheers,
Dermot.

-----Original Message-----
From: Brian O'Donoghue [mailto:Brian.ODonoghue at kbs.ie] 
Sent: 16 December 2002 15:59
To: 'ilug at linux.ie'
Subject: RE: [ILUG] Re: slackware (was: Esat ADSL)


> it must be possible to upgrade in a timely and predictable manner to
> minimise risk and downtime, therefore package management is extremely
> important.

It is, though. I'll admit that Debian, Gentoo, Red Hat or others may
make it 'easier', but for example I have subscribed to the Slackware
security mailing list (a very quite one at that) and if and when updates
come out on the security front (and I have only received notification of
one), the general mail around contains links to the updated package.

I'll concede that Debian Gentoo and even Red Hat have 'better' systems
for package management, however Slackware is far and away much simpler
in terms of setting up a firewall for example, if one is doing so by
hand.

/etc/rc.d/rc.local gets edited. In Debain (which is the next contender
for the title) as a newbie I was confounded by the /etc/init.d/service
symlinks to various rc0.d rc1.d runlevels etc and I found that Slackware
due to it's simplicity allowed me to tackle more of the core challenges,
then figuring out what went where, in terms of starting services,
stopping services and so on for different runlevels (for example).
-- 
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