[NTLUG:Discuss] Slack vs Redhat

[Chris Cox]

Patrick Parks wrote:
> I would love to get some input on what the list thiks of this subject. I
> have been using Red hat for a while, and really use to like it, up until
> they started doing things like not providing support for mp3 in their
> later versions. I liked Red Hat mainly because it was easy to upgrade
> packages, and there was always fixes available and easy to find for any
> security vulns. Speaking of security, I am running slack 9 on one of my
> machines and notice they are using inetd, instead of xinetd. Which
> distro do you think is more secure? Why would slack not be using xinetd
> in the newest version? Should I feel better using Linux from a large
> company like Red Hat, or with someone like slack?

The best reason for inetd is familiarity and compatability with
commercial Unix (not that they interoperate... speaking in terms
of admin knowledge space).

xinetd certainly has more features including a built in tcp wrapper
like thing... but that could be considered a weakness I suppose.

Both inetd and xinetd have severe issues under load.  D.J. Berstein
can tell you all about that.

If RH has never given you any grief, you're probably safe with
that.  As for me, I'm a SuSE person.  It's all I deploy and my
customers are happy instead of frustrated (many of those
customers/friends are not using RH anymore).

If this is for home use or just messing around, you might have
more fun sticking with Slack or trying Debian or even gentoo.
These will also work well in places where you have the time
to deal with source code compiles and manual config issues
(fun if you manage 10 platforms... a headache if you manage
200+).