[techtalk] why debian essay..

[Martin.Caitlyn at epamail.epa.gov]

Hi, everyone,

First, I agree with the comments about Red Hat in the essay.  We still use
Red Hat at work, but I personally gave up on it after 6.0.  It's not just
libpcap and termcap:  they've now gone their own way on even the C compiler
in 7.1 (though gcc is still available).  Also, 6.1 and 7.0 had way too many
bugs for release code.   I also won't use any distro that isn't open source
and free, but most still are.

The main reason I have stayed away from Debian mostly has to do with ease
of use, and also ease of teaching non-technical users.  The oh-so-simple
tools in distros like Mandrake (my current favorite) and Caldera allowed me
to move friends and even my Mom to Linux from Windows painlessly, something
I really doubt I could have done with Debian.  I am tech support for my Mom
still, BTW :)

Please, don't get me wrong.  I do UNIX and Linux work for a living.  I am
very comfortable on the command line and generally don't bother with the
GUI at all when doing admin work here.  Give me ssh and sudo and my various
command line utilities and I am happy.  OTOH, on my home network where I
have easy at-the-console access to everything I tend to take advantage of
the GUI tools.  They are just plain easier for some things, and Mandrake
probably has the best set out there.  Oh, and I am one of those people who
actually like rpm, particularly with kpackage to manage it.  I know there
are lots of people who disagree.

BTW, has anyone downloaded and tried to run Mandrake 8.0 Beta 3?  I'm
always chicken when it comes to Betas on my machines.  For example, we have
a Red Hat 7.1 Beta 2 (Wolverine) box in the lab here at work, and it is
absolutely buggy and downright awful.  They actually went backwards since
the last beta.

All the best,
Caity

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Caitlyn M. Martin             martin.caitlyn at epa.gov
Systems Analyst              (919) 541-4441
Lockheed Martin
(a contractor for the US EPA)
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