[NTLUG:Discuss] SuSE vs. RedHat 6.1

[Christopher Browne]

On Fri, 22 Oct 1999 11:01:37 CDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
Kyle Edbauer <abignerd at yahoo.com>  said:
> I don't understand why a discussion of the advantages and disadvatages of
> different linux distributions would be a bad topic for a linux listserve.
> A lot of people are probably still using the first distribution they ever
> picked up.  How would exposure or differing opinions necessarily result
> in a "religious war"?  If someone uses pico as their text editor, then
> maybe a discussion of vi vs emacs would be of benefit to that individual. 
> I personally am interested in hearing about experiences other users have
> had with different distributions, and would be particulary interested in
> hearing about using the Debian and Mandrake distros.

The 'which distribution is best' question does tend to polarise people, all 
too often stirring flame wars either:
a) With the implication that [Distribution X] is the One True Distribution, or
b) Demonizing [Distribution Y] as the "next Microsoft."

Of the big names, about the only ones never accused of "Microsoft-hood" seem 
to be:
- Debian
- TurboLinux

The big-name Red Hat variations, notably:
- Red Hat Linux
- Caldera (once based on RHL, *long* ago)
- SuSE
all have gotten bashed heavily at one time or another, as has Slackware.

(Back in the days of SLS, it looked to some as if Slackware might turn Linux 
into an essentially proprietary system, with much the same paranoia that 
surrounds Red Hat Software today.)

Pretty much all of them have, at one time or another, suffered from 
difficulties in installation on some hardware configurations.  Most have 
suffered, on occasion, from quality control problems.

Often enough a fixed XFree86 server got released 3 weeks later, or someone 
didn't like the defaults vis-a-vis security configuration, or libraries 
weren't as expected.  Slackware dwindled into a minor player in part due to a 
transition between a.out and ELF that was more painful than the Red Hat 
"pains" in transitioning from LIBC5 to GLIBC2.

All of the preceding is just backdrop to underline that virtually every 
distribution has suffered similarly from problems both real and perceived.

Now comes the thorny scenario that comes up every month.

It's Saturday, and there are 20 people lined up to get the latest and greatest 
Linux CDs at an NTLUG meeting.

A newcomer joins that line who has not yet seriously used Linux, and he/she 
looks at the table and sees:
- Mandrake Linux 6.5
- Red Hat Linux 6.0
- Caldera OpenLinux 2.3
- TurboLinux (some version)
- Debian 2.01

This user has not installed Linux before.  *I* know that all these 
distributions are plucking most of their code out of common streams of 
development, and figure that there's little forcible merit to any one over 
another.  But the new guy doesn't know what Apache is, and is almost certainly 
not competent to assess which of the CDs is preferable.

The new user then makes an apparently sensible decision, and asks *me* which 
one they ought to get, assuming, incorrectly, that I'll be able to give an 
unambiguous answer.

What should I tell this newcomer?

- There might perhaps be a situation where the X servers on Mandrake this 
month are a bit newer than those with any other distribution, and support the 
user's spiffy new graphics card that Precision Insight just made a release for.

- There might be some critical bug in one package on Red Hat Linux 6.0 that 
affects the new user that is a Perl expert.

- Note that with staggered release dates, it might be necessary for someone to 
install *all* of them *every* month in order to be able to have a 
realistically competent opinion.

- Note that I have about 15 seconds to get useful information out of the user 
in the unlikely situation that I'd be able to usefully distinguish a forcibly 
preferable distribution based on playing "3 questions."

- Since they all "dip from the same source code streams," the only software 
that is persistently different tends to be:
  a) Installation tools
  b) System management tools

In two weeks, *nobody* will care about the installation tools, because if the 
user is reinstalling so often that this is a significant continuing factor, 
the user will both be expert with the tools, and probably should do installs 
of multiple distributions if they're installing so much.

Do we need a comparative discussion of distributions?  If there's to be a hope 
of giving new users intelligible answers to the plaintive plea: "What 
distribution should I try?" we *need* to have a dispassionate discussion that 
is pretty much perpetual so that it is able to cope with the fact that (for 
instance) Red Hat Linux 6.1 just got released, thereby meaning that assertions 
about bugs in 6.0 are fairly obsolete...
--
Rules of the Evil Overlord #13. "I will be secure in my
superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving
clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to
show they pose no threat." 
<http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html>
cbbrowne at ntlug.org- <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>