[Techtalk] Same old question -- which distro?

[Michelle Murrain]

At 8:37 PM -0500 1/29/03, Brenda Bell wrote:
>I'm sure everyone will give me their true-blue opinion of their 
>particular distro... but I'm particularly interested in finding out 
>if someone has experience with multiple distros and can offer 
>information on why they switched, whether they're happy they 
>switched, how they measure up against each other and so forth.

I've been around the block, and right now, use two distros, after 
having tried a bunch. I love Debian, and have tended to use that a 
lot in servers, because of how easy it is to upgrade it, and I don't 
have to futz with desktopy things like sound or video. However, if 
you've got some unusual things, you really do need to know exactly 
what the drivers are that are needed, because Debian isn't always so 
great at auto-discovery.

I switched from Mandrake to Red Hat last year - although I liked 
Mandrake a lot, it just seemed a lot easier to deal with Red Hat, 
since they have diverged so much in the last few years, and some red 
hat packages don't work well with Mandrake the way they used to. I 
happen to like Red Hat 8 - there are a few issues that are a pain in 
the butt, but they are fairly easily remedied in my opinion - but I'm 
sure a lot of people will beg to differ. But Chapter 11 or no, I 
wouldn't go back to Mandrake - I've found Red Hat to be a bit easier 
to deal with in terms of adding stuff and upgrades, etc. - and having 
a big installed user base really helps when dealing with weird stuff.

I admin a couple of Red Hat servers remotely, and I like red hat fine 
for servers, even though I really like Debian better.  I've thought 
about trying a number of other, less popular distros (gentoo, 
libranet) but just haven't had the time to get around to them. Maybe 
soon... I also keep meaning to revisit suse, since it's been 2 years 
since I ran it.

I think the truth about Linux distros at this point in time is that 
it really all is about personal preference, and you can make any of 
them work for you, with lesser or greater amounts of work.  If you 
are familiar with Mandrake, but worried about their future, Red Hat 
is an easy shift, because they are so similar.
-- 
.Michelle

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Michelle Murrain, Technology Consulting
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