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
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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/
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iD8DBQFA38O7POfrcNNQX7oRAtBFAJ9yW4GKdErMORQ+594tA9+n3UJz4gCeMgS5
KtgsvbfjMMyxj//t3iXIVW0=
=D0Pd
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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/
