15 Feb
2005
15 Feb
'05
9 a.m.
Eric Dondelinger wrote:
Precisely my point - with "apt-get update;
apt-get upgrade" it
normally doesn't make any work at all. The exceptions are very
rare, I mentioned those. Even an "apt-get dist-upgrade" is rather
painless - the equivalent of which on RedHat or SuSE has always
gone badly wrong for me.
After giving it much thought, I decided that I wanted 3 distros:
- one live distro for system maintenance in "emergency" cases (I
currently use Kanotix)
- one to learn Linux well (which I chose Slackware for)
- one commercial in case I have the opportunity to do Linux at work
(which is SuSE for now).
Why 3? Starting as a complete Linux "n00b" a few months ago, my main
concern was that I would install a lot of distros but fail to learn at
least one correctly. And, as Patrick Kaell said back then, they all turn
out to be basically the same, so I did want to learn one very well,
hoping that in the end I could easily adapt to any other. So I
deliberately limited the number of distros I'd look into.
Now, I am not a guru yet, so if I have to replace one of these 3 distros
(because it ceases to exist, or it does no longer respond to my
criteria), I will look into other distros. But not at this point.
I consider the "pain" to upgrade Slackware something I have to go
through in order to understand what is happening, which was my main
point. Before this, I will stay clear of apt-gets, portages and make worlds.
Yes, stable may be outdated - but it's *stable*
and does it's job,
which is exactly what you want in a server.
Slackware has a good reputation for being stable, being good for
servers, and *not* being outdated. Even for servers, I think that having
Samba 3 is an advantage. Honestly - what's the point of having Samba
2.2.3 on a server today?
I never understood why Debian equals stable and archaïc. A stable
version is IMO the last minor version of a product, i.e. KDE 3.2.3 when
KDE 3.3.0 comes out. It's not KDE 2.
The current stable is about to be replaced (woody
-> sarge), sarge
is what I'm currently using on several desktops. It's quite recent,
it's quite stable, but still does move a bit (lots of stuff to
download when updating).
One of my criteria was regular updates on CD; Debain fails that. For my
criteria, you might want to have a look at
http://www.homepages.lu/pu/Distros.html.
If I want bleeding edge, with good docs, I'll go
Gentoo thank you
very much - which of course is a lot more work.
Still, next occasion I'll give FreeBSD a run (again, I've used it
before).
I have become allergic to source compiles. Also, FreeBSD seems to lack
stability in version 5. If you want to try BSD, I'd recommend NetBSD at
this point.
Regards,
-pu