Re: [Lilux-help] Distro is not as important as we all think

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 _______________________________________________ Lilux-help mailing list Lilux-help(a)lilux.lu http://lilux.lu/mailman/listinfo/lilux-help