> > excuse me?
> > i _fully_ disagree with your opinion.
>
> Are you sure? A distro is only a fraction of all the things you have to
> choose. You have to start sometime. You can always change the distro
> later. Really. You are a good example for this (you have used all sorts
> of distros). You can even dual boot different distros and share the swap
> partition, the /home partition (uid and gid must be the same) and the
> /usr/local partition (for the self compiled programs).
a fraction?
what is a distro? what makes up a distro?
- the package management
- init tools
- system management tools
did i forget anything?
those 3 points (and mayba more) are different from distro to distro
(if you leave clones out).
those three points are very important to me when choosing a distro.
i agree with you that if you don't care whats under the hood, etc, and just
want to work, no matter how, and just let company X care about sec- probs
etc.... it doesn't matter what distro you use and it matters more whether you
choose xine or mplayer.
but if you care, or have to care, that's a big difference.
> > a distro is _VERY_ important.
> > not every distro is the same, not every distro feels the same or has the
> > same "features".
>
> As long as you are not *working*, this might make a big difference. As
> soon as the system is set up, people sometimes want also to do some
> *productive* things with their system. And then they may have chosen the
> best distro but still do not known if they should take mplayer or xine
> to watch movies for example.
see above...
> > i've been using over the years, all sorts of distros, and the one and
> > only i really feel comfortable with right now, is gentoo.
> > why? because it's source based, because it has IMO, the best package
> > manager and system of them all, because _"I"_ have the freedom to do
> > whatever i want,
>
> Sometimes, if you are a C programmer, you will not take the Gentoo
> package, but download the source right away from the project's homepage
> and modify things *yourself* for your needs. The Gentoo database will
> not know that this software is installed on your system (unless you
> package it yourself and take the pain to define the dependencies). The
> next time you install a Gentoo package that needs the software, it will
> install the package a second time without your patch.
sorry, but do you have any clue about gentoo ?
that might be right for rpm or deb or whatever, and the corresponding distros,
but not for gentoo!
gentoo is source-based anyway. if you wanna tweak stuff, it's a matter of secs
or max. mins, and you everything done, AND the system knows about your
software.
with gentoo, we speak of ebuilds, not packages.
ebuilds define how the pkmng-tool configures,compiles and installs your
software.
and to have deps right, that's easy....
you can as well have your ebuild included in portage, so others may profit of
it as well.
i don't see you problem with this...
> That's the reason why I prefer distros without dependency checking. You
> have seen a nice text editor optimized for LaTeX files? But you don't
> need LaTeX, you want to use the editor anyway for other things? What if
> the package maintainer of the LaTeX editor has decided for you that
> there is a dependency, 'emerge editorxyz' will also install LaTeX,
> unless you break dependencies explicitly.
NO!!!!!!!
ever heard of the "USE" variable ?
as i said b4, your assumptions may be right for suse, rh, mandr, deb,
whatever, but NOT!!!! for gentoo.
> Anyway, Gentoo does even not use the original software from the
> project's homepage, but specially patched versions.
NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
gentoo does mirror the software on many many servers. if the source-package is
not found there, it downloads it from the author's page.
but it may as well only download it from the author's page.
what is the problem with that?
i still don't see any.
and that gentoo patches _EVERY_ software is just plain wrong.
they do apply patches to some software, to fix bugs, or whatever.
but those patches are generally patches from the mailinglist of that project
or so.
> That is not how *I* define freedom! Freedom means to be independent from
> the distro, and (all Gentoo users should listen now) from the network
> connection!
let me tell you this....before you judge about something and make assumptions
about something you have obviously no clue about, TAKE THE TIME TO READ DOCS
AND GET A CLUE ABOUT IT!
> I want to be able to recover from a disc crash at *any* time by
> reinstalling the distro from CD, reinstalling all patches and
> applications from my archive and by restoring my data from my latest
> backup. What if the Gentoo people have given up the distro yesterday?
> You will not able to reinstall your system. You do not have paid for it,
> there is no guarantee that the Gentoo service will last forever.
yes you will be able.
what if slackware will be discontinued?
did you pay for it?
who cares if you paid for something, when they give it up?
your arguments are pretty bad.
gentoo people have grp's or bins, and yes we do have recue and live cds as
well.
read above...i don't wanna re-write everything...
> If Patrick Volkering gives up Slackware tomorrow, I will have plenty of
> time to migrate, because I have saved a copy of everything I downloaded
> and installed. I own my hardware and have everything under my control.
so do i.
and i bet i have more control over my distro than you have over yours
> What about servers? If you have servers, it is important to keep them
> all on the same patch level. If you install new patches, it is very wise
> to test them on a test platform for a few weeks (new packages *can*
> introduce problems). After the test, you have to install the tested
> packages, even if there are newer ones on the distros servers. 'emerge
> world' just doesn't cut it on servers! And our servers aren't even
> connected to the internet!
better inform yourself about what you write....
> But that is even the opposite of what you did. Didn't you find your
> favorite distro by *using* Linux instead of thinking before using??? Why
> do you recommend to the people a different learning curve than for
> yourself?
by think i include try.
maybe not try for years, but try.
sorry that i wasn't more explicit about that.
> I never said otherwise. I only said that it may not be as important as
> we all think.
that's your opinion.
not mine.
--
regards,
Georges Toth
The distro is not as important as we all think. Much more important are
the applications and the whole environment. For example, I recreate on
every Un*x platform I work my favorite environment (shell profile, shell
aliases, window manager settings, etc). I even compile the GNU ls
(because of the colours) on every *BSD and commercial Unix I use.
In fact I use Yellow Dog Linux and MacOS X (also a real Unix) as a dual
boot solution on my iBook (Slackware is x86 only), Solaris 8 on my
SparcStation 5 and use RedHat and AIX at work. And guess what? They all
look and *feel* the same. I have installed the same tools, window
manager, applications, have the same settings and so on. I don't use the
distro's defaults.
My opinion: It may be difficult to find your optimal distro, but finding
your optimal editor or script language is far more important. As long as
you are *using* your computer instead of tweaking, upgrading and
installing all the time, the distro is not important at all.
You have extremely many choices: the base OS (*BSD, Linux), the distro,
the shell (bash, tcsh, ksh, zsh, ...), the editor (vi, emacs), the vi
derivative (nvi, vim, elvis, ...), the emacs implementation (GNU Emacs,
uemacs, xemacs, jed, ...), the graphical editor (nedit, scite, gedit,
bluefish, xvi, ...), the windowmanager (twm, fvwm, olvwm, icewm,
windowmaker, afterstep, ion, wm2, blackbox, fluxbox, openbox, ...), the
desktop environment (CDE, KDE, Gnome, xfce, ...) and so on.
For instance, here is a good page comparing the window managers:
http://xwinman.org
Simply take the first distro you can get. Even if it is not the optimal
one it will not be bad. You have to use Linux, read articles, try out
many things before you find your optimal environment.
By the way, here are my favorites:
Shell: bash, (also like tcsh)
Window Manager: icewm, (also like window maker)
File Manager (&Desktop): ROX http://rox.sourceforge.net , very speedy!
Programming Language: C
Script Language: bash, gawk
Graphical Tools: xv, xpaint, bitmap, gimp
Vector Graphical Tool: xfig
Text Processing: LaTeX (yes, still better than all the WYSIWYG)
Text Editor: nedit, (also like scite)
vi derivative: elvis
WWW Browser: mozilla, dillo (very speedy!!!)
Mail Client: mozilla
Small Database: grok
Calendar: plan
Patrick Kaell
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Hash: SHA1
- -------- Original Message --------
Subject: Opne Source Software Research
Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2004 17:47:07 +0000
From: Yordan D. Minev <yordan(a)rjtorres.net>
To: yordan(a)rjtorres.net
Hello everyone from the worldwide Linux community,
My name is Yordan Dimitrov Minev and I am an undergraduate student
majoring in Mathematics and Computer Science at St. Lawrence University,
Canton, NY. Along with my adviser Professor Robert Torres, this summer I
am working on an academic research-project investigating the trends in
the open source/free software, entitled "Will the penuin break the
windows?"
Some of the issues I am interested in researching are the reasons that
people use and develop for Linux, the ideological differences between
the free software foundation and the open source foundation, and the
reasons some computer users are dissatisfied with proprietary,
closed-source software.
Aiming to understand how the Linux users feel about the open source
software, I developed a web-based survey, and I kindly ask all of you to
participate. You can start the survey by going to
http://myslu.stlawu.edu/~ydmine03/survey.html It shoud not take you more
than 15-30 minutes. I would like to ask all of you who are
administrators of Linux user groups to forward this e-mail to the
members of your user group. Also, feel free to forward this e-mail to
other Linux user groups you colaborate with. My aim is to get as many
respondents as possible. Furthermore, I would be delighted to have
respondents with different levels of computer experience.
In the coming weeks, after analysing the results from the survey, I will
write a paper and I will make a short presentation on the topic at St.
Lawrence University. I would like to stress that the purpose of this
survey is solely educational. I fully assure you that the results I
obtain and all materials from this project will never be sold; rather,
they will remain freely available at
http://myslu.stlawu.edu/~ydmine03/survey.html. Your privacy will also be
protected, and at no time will I publish, give away, or sell your
personal information or e-mail address.
Lastly, I would like to appologize for not sending you a survey in your
native language. Speaking primarily a language other than English
myself, I very much appreciate the diversity of cultures and languages
in the contemporary world.
Thank you very much for participating in my survey. If you have any
questions, concerns, or comments, please do not hessitate to contact me
(ydmine03(a)stlawu.edu) or my adviser for this project, Professor Robert
Torres (rtorres(a)stlawu.edu) Either one of us would be happy to answer
your questions or address your concerns.
Regards,
Yordan Minev
- --
Thierry Coutelier Président LiLux asbl
7, Rue Jacques Sturm L-2556 Luxembourg
Office:+352 710725 608 Home:+352 406776
http://www.linux.lu/
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Hi all,
I've had a very nice feedback on my previous question, so I'd like to
take the opportunity to ask a question that's been bothering me for some
time now.
I've had some Unix exposure at work with AIX, and I wanted to have Unix
at home to learn more about it. I started with SuSE, which was nice but
too much Windows-like. Gentoo seemed like a geek thing, I found it too
hard to start with. As Gentoo kept refering to FreeBSD, I gave this one
a try, and I liked it very much.
The one thing that annoyed me, though, was the fact that pre-compiled
packages were hard to find, and the general answer was to compile from
source using the ports system. I must agree that the result was always
OK, but at the cost of hours of compilation for KDE for example. My
personal preference would be the other way round: use precompiled
packages, and compile only if they don't work in your specific
configuration.
This leads me to my first question:
(1) Did you find any real advantage to compiling from source, except
that you can tweak the result by using compile options -Dxxxxx?
I then went on to look for something else which did not have this
drawback. Finally, I've decided to give Debian a try, as it appears to
have the best package system around - unless you believe that you should
always compile from source, in which case Gentoo is probably better,
although my understanding is that Debian allows you to compile from
source as well.
Thus, my second question:
(2) Would you agree that Debian is the best distribution if compiling
from source should be a fallback option, and not a must?
I know this one is tricky, but I am also interested in what
distributions you use and for what reason.
Hope you've made it 'till here ;-)
Regards,
-curious PU
Just as a info:
There is Slax:
http://slax.linux-live.org
A Slackware based live CD. The ISO is only 185Mb large, so it fits on
the nice small (8cm) CDs. It contains KDE 3.2.2 final, KOffice 1.3.1
final, MPlayer 1.0pre4, cdrtools and much more!
I haven't tried it yet, because I have just discovered it. It may be
nice for people who find that a Knoppix CD may be to large to carry in a
pocket!
Patrick Kaell
Hi all,
I was just wondering whether there will be some folks of the LUGL on the
LinuxTag in Karlsruhe on the 23-26 June. I for myself will be at the
Symlink booth on the 25th and 26th for sure. Would be glad to meet some
people there ;-)
Friendly
--
Bob Hentges - http://bob.hentges.lu/
--
Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge, others just gurgle.
Slackware 10 has just been released. Got this message from the Slackware
mailing list few hours ago.
It includes KDE 3.2.3, Kernel 2.6.7 (Kernel 2.4.26 as an option and
during installation).
If you don't have a broadband connection I can burn the CDs for you. I
will also order the original CDs from the store but that will take longer.
I usually buy the CDs to support them, even if I have downloaded the
ISOs before. Unfortunately I must sometimes pay 'Droits d'Entree à l'UE'
for freeware!!!! And this can be more expensive than the CD itself! Arghhh!
Patrick Kaell
Howdy all,
I was just wondering what you people think of witting messages in text
format = flowed to mailing lists - instead of the commonly used line
break at char 72 or wherever. I am conscious that basically a whitespace
at EOL is bad(TM), and the the evil OE aka Outlook Express will not
quote correctly when replying to a message written in flowed mode - but
still...
what is your opinion concerning text format flowed ? ;-)
Friendly,
Bob Hentges
--
http://bob.hentges.lu/
