> Now, tell me why debian wouldn't do the same job. I've a raq2 here, a
> little 200Mhz mips box with a 4GB drive and 16Mb RAM. X would certainly be
> overkill, considering it doesn't have a graphics card. The standard debian
> install of 100 odd packages fitted nicely into 130MB of that machines
> disk.
I agree, Debian is minimalist too, I have no doubt about that.
Certainly from the standpoint of running on old hardware, it is 'as good',
better or slightly worse in some departments then distros like Slackware,
Gentoo, IPCop and others.
It's simply a matter of personal preference and what I'm used to at this
stage, I could start making arguments for or against here.
>In antefacto, we got a redhat install down to 40MB, with some messing (OK,
>a lot of
> messing, and we could have been saved a lot of time, had someone
> documented the --without-docs option to RPM).
I accept that point. For someone learning how to do things with Linux,
cutting Red Hat down to 40mb is pretty much out of the question, but of
course, since you have total access to a Linux system, with enough time and
effort you can get (most) distributions to do the same thing.
> I maintain that just not using those tools will give you as much
> expertise as not having them. If you install RedHat, no one will force you
> to use the GUI tools.
True.
> In fact, for setups like ISDN, you really need the GUI tools, before you
> get anything working, and afterwards, you can pull it apart.
Hmm, I'm going to contradict myself now. I had to setup a firewall hard and
fast the other day, with ISDN doing dial on demand. So instead of trying to
get Red Hat to do that out of the box (which it seemed reluctant to do), I
appropriated a box by a company called (TeamInternet) and installed IPCop on
it.
Thor smiled and as if by magic I had dial on demand and firewalling in a
jar.
That said if and when I ssh into the firewall or the mailserver, it helps to
have tinkered with Debian, Slackware and the like, if only to remove the
mindset that things are gui based and you can't get at what's under the
hood.
"Would I buy a car with the hood welded shut"
Nope.
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