[techtalk] Differences between linux distributions

[Telsa Gwynne]

On Mon, Feb 21, 2000 at 03:57:27AM -0500 or thereabouts, Dan Nguyen wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 21, 2000 at 07:15:16PM +1300, Jamie Walker wrote:
> > As for the version jump - by all accounts after too many questions about
> > "When are you going to upgrade to Linux 6.0 like Redhat have?" he
> > decided to join the party with inflated version numbers, just like many
> > of the others have. (ie, RH's first version was v3 if I remember
> > correctly).

I thought there was a Red Hat 2.0 but I'm not sure.
> 
> I understand why the jump happened, but (RH users please do not take
> offense) Slackware should not degrade itself.  No matter how much

Grin. No offence taken. I thought the Slackware version jump was
done for an excellent reason: I too heard the "Because I'm fed up
of being asked why Slackware is behind!" story :)

> people don't realize it but most major linux distros are very
> political.  Some distros are just too commercial, all power to them.
> But I saw the Slack jump as them abandoning their principles, and
> embracing itself with the dark side.   Wouldn't it be better to
> explain to the newbie that Linux is only at version 2.3.x and what a
> distribution is and that RH != Linux.

Oh boy.

Most of the Linux shows I'd been to initially had been attended by 
people who were familiar with Linux. Recently, however, it's definitely
changed.

I went to a UK Expo in London last year where I ended up explaining
kernel numbers and "all these little programs are maintained by
different people. They all have their own little version numbers
which change at different rates. You could collect them all together 
for yourself. But that's effort. What a distribution does is collect 
lots of programs, check they work together, put them all on a CD, and
give the overall product a number." over, and _over_ again. 

It really really was confusing a lot of people. At the time, SuSE was 
apparently a version ahead of Red Hat, (as ever :) I think it was then 
SuSE 6.1 and Red Hat 6.0), and yet everyone kept talking about 2.2/2.3/2.4 
to the poor business folks, and they kept waiting to hear about 6.something.
Definite Linux stole a march on everyone by starting at version 7.0. 
I am waiting to see whether they go from 9.0 to 10.0 or A.

Distributions seem obvious to me, but I suppose that's because
I am used to Freshmeat and seeing dozens of different versions of
dozens of programs coming out and knowing that some of them will
end up in different distributions. To someone who is used to one
main vendor of an OS with three or four well-known apps which are
often tied to particular versions of the OS, I can imagine that
the Linux world must look like complete anarchy :)

Most of them went "Ohhh!" and looked enlightened, and the next
question was commonly, "So what's special about the kernel, and
will only the newer versions do that?" whilst pointing at the KDE or
GNOME displays.

I did like one guy who bucked the trend in an entertaining way.
He was being shown GNOME or KDE, nodding to himself, and someone
flicked open a terminal window. 

"Ohhh!" he said with sudden appreciation. "A CLI. How wonderful."

(Turns out he was very familiar with something I'd never heard of
which switched from a command-line interface to some graphical thing
and he'd hated the graphical thing as inflexible.)

Looking at the huge display of Linux that I found in a computer
shop recently, which was Macmillan, SuSE, Mandrake, and Red Hat,
I can see why some companies are playing the version number game.
When you see them all displayed in a shop next to each other, I
can imagine that some people will just take the highest number as
the 'most recent'. Macmillan's "Deluxe Linux" or "Complete Linux"
or whatever and one of the highest numbers was probably a big
seller there...

Telsa

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