I decided to take a new look at a lot of the mainstream and popular distros the past week, just sort of seeing how things are and keeping myself current with changes. Thought maybe we could generate a non-flame based discussions on opinions of distros. ::::RedHat Severn. I can't tell the difference from RH 9. Minor kernel version update. Most of the RPMS I've messed with from the CDs are smooth, which I don't remember being the case with 7.3. I do have to admit, I think they made a solid move with BlueCurve despite the backlash they got. It's consistent and once you learn their menu layout, does a decent job of administering your UI environment. I did find some bugs here and there with some of the UI config tools, but nothing mind shaking. I still find the script-chains for network configuration annoying (x.script -> y.script -> z.script -> zz.configfile). But once you learn where settings are stored, you can see the logic. I think RHat is on track to cement itself in as the server platform of choice for Enterprise customers. The UI will goes a long way to helping companies create mixed environments without needing a massive team of Unix gurus. (they'll still need a few though *grin*). I think the top distro breaks down by region: USA->RHat, Europe->Suse, Asia->TurboLinux ::::Slackware 9.0 I never tried this, but gave it a shot. I loved the install (still like to run fdisk myself and create my filesystems). The install being simple and typical unix geek appealed to me. I liked the basic system, though I think they're init scripts are way too simple. Still, with some time, I think it would customize nicely for a dilegent admin. I can see why it appeals to the minimalists. Its easy to get swamped under all the software installed on some distros by default. Slack seemed to keep to the core basics. I have to admit though, the thought of tracking dependencies for make; make && make install isn't appealing anymore. I don't mind the occasional custom job and tracking bugs, but I really don't want to go back to doing that daily. OSS is getting too mature for that IMHO. Though the package system was nice, there were not as many pre-built packages compared to RPM, APT, PORTS, or PORTAGE. (I guess Alien would help quite a bit). :::::Debian "sid" Been unlucky with this one the past few times. Had hardware conflicts with the sid images I got and didn't have the personal time to really track them down. I tried sarge, still good old Debian. Have to love apt-get and dpkg. Only thing is having to jump some hoops to get XFree86 4.3.0. I saw the experimental package, but convinced it was still the rock solid Debian I remember and use *grin* I just moved on. :::::FreeBSD 5.1 Well, not Linux, but I like it. Been using this for some low priority production servers without problem. I had some problems with my HP CD Writer and my Firewire DVD RW, looks like a driver bug. Got to love ports and packages on BSD and the common administration tools and config files. Probably need to wait for STABLE to come out in a few months. :::::Gentoo 1.4 The last one on my list. I'm finising the install on this up today. I didn't find it that hard to install, though I was suprised to see they do it all manually. But the LiveCD shell was nicely done. Emerge looks great. I personally don't mind compiling some OSS (almost always port stuff on BSD anyway), but the big boys and girls (XFree, Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc) I just don't want to be bothered with, especially since most are in an event-wait loop most of the time, not much to gain with optimization in most cases (let me know you find this to be wrong from your experiences, please). However, I do like the USE flag option for compiling packages. Makes it easy to rebuild say PHP for Apache with the various options you might require (well, should make it easy, haven't tried it yet). I also like the rc-update and env-update scripts. Convienance is nice. I nearly skipped this, but the positive opinions of people here on the boards as well as some geek feedback on the net kept me looking. Once I found the Stage3 tarballs and the LiveCD for the P4 I gave in. I also found their forums pretty helpful and constructive. You don't find that too often, usually a lot of flaming and attitude. But it looks like they actively run their boards so might be a good reason. Drop your opinions of your distros here, curious what many people are using, why and how they like the experience. Interim. [edited by - Interim on September 3, 2003 1:12:33 PM]

Interesting.

I don''t have much experience with Slack. Though I find RHat to be the slowest of them all, especially Severn, for boot up.. You can usually tweak it a bit by cutting some rc5.d scripts you don''t need.

Gentoo I always couldn''t make a full opinion on. I think most of the apps people look for optimizations won''t show much at all, being in event looks. Still, I do like the Portage-Emerge system on Gentoo. I think if you''re going to compile software, its well done. I''d much rather manage /etc/make.conf and USE flags than to edit custom make files or track down a lot of configure switches.

However, I think the the community should invest in putting more pre-compiled binaries out with emerge. But I don''t know if that appeals to the Gentoo user base. Still, I got to admit, I do like what I read on their forums, as well as their BSD style configuration scripts and conf files.

I''ll find out, going to give it a try for a bit. There was no way I was going to wait a few days for X, Gnome and OpenOffice to compile, but with the Stage3 I should be able to cut that down signifigantly. I think once its running I will get a better opinion.

What''s your experience with the ebuilds? Fairly solid, buggy? Minor errors or blanket conflicts? I don''t see too much about bad ebuilds, usually some library conflicts or such that "shouldn''t happen".

Int.

Suse is the best if you are interested in high performance computing with Intels tools. They used to support red hat also but RH made their kernels so that vtune doesnt run anymore. Another big problem with RH as the desktop is all those scripts they are starting in the background. Suse does not even care about locate.

I have to concur about RH. I don''t want to knock them, I think they work they''ve done getting Linux mainstream (along with Suse and TurboLinux) is great. Out of the box, it''s a very solid and comfortable desktop for just about any user IMHO.

However, being mostly an admin and needing to do custom work on my servers a lot, I found RHat''s scripts to get annoying. I think they''re well written and organized, but I can never seem to find exactly what I need to make the custom modification I want. Something else clobbers over my change or the settings are held elsewhere.

I thought one of Mandrake''s claims to fame was compilation under 686 (which I think covers most Pentium-Pro or better and delivers a decent performance boost vs 386 flags)? Suse the same? I tried it a while ago, but it doesn''t come up much amongst our customers or at work outside of some forum support notes from the European techs.

Int.

RH has a high quality product for servers and they are doing a lot for linux but are they really interested in the desktop?

I dont know if Suse is the answer to everything except how to use the tools from Intel but they have some nice features.
- A config system for X that detects if nvidias drivers is not installed and can configure XF86Config if the nvidia driver is installed
- they are distributing some stuff that the RH users has to download like acroread and java
- the normal install is much smaller than RH. You have to install some more for development but its still small without anything I care about is missing.