[techtalk] Differences between linux distributions

Robert Kiesling kiesling at mainmatter.com
Mon Feb 21 00:18:01 EST 2000


"Tania M. Morell" <tania at shadow.net> wrote:

> What are the main differences between distributions of linux like
> RedHat, Mandrake, Debian, Caldera...  etc.  Can anyone tell me?

I'll try to explain this as coherently as possible. Caldera and
Mandrake are very similar to Red Hat, which was the original.
Caldera's installation and configuration is much more complete than
Red Hat's... installation wizards, and so forth.  Debian is actual
Debian Gnu/Linux, and it is the only distribution where completely
free software forms the OS...  "non-free" software, as they say, is in
a separate part of the distribution.  Slackware was the first
distribution that actually worked, and I still like it's packaging
scheme (plain old compressed tarballs) much better than the others.

I don't see why someone couldn't come up with a standard 
pkgadd and pkgrm, that all of the distributions could use.  Ah,
the wonders of free enterprise...

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