Mailing List Archive

Linux distros.
Hello,

This is kind of off topic but I was just wondering what distro most
people on this list are running?

I've been bouncing back and forth between Slackware and Redhat 9
lately. I like the speed of Slack but the ease of package management
under RH9 is nice (especially after installing apt and Synaptic). At
the moment I'm running Slack9 and I'm trying to stick with it for a
while to try and learn more about it.

So, just wondering if there's a particular distro that's popular in
this group or what.

Thanks,

Vince
Re: Linux distros. [ In reply to ]
Thus spake Vincent Colombo:
> I've been bouncing back and forth between Slackware and Redhat 9
> lately. I like the speed of Slack but the ease of package management
> under RH9 is nice (especially after installing apt and Synaptic). At
> the moment I'm running Slack9 and I'm trying to stick with it for a
> while to try and learn more about it.

Debian, of course. If you're going to go to the trouble of installing
apt, why not just use Debian? MZ's 0.8 packages have been working
wonderfully for me.

--
Nathan Poznick <poznick@conwaycorp.net>

Conscience is the mirror of our souls, which represents the errors of
our lives in their full shape. - George Bancroft
RE: Linux distros. [ In reply to ]
> This is kind of off topic but I was just wondering what distro most
> people on this list are running?

The two favourites from those in the know usually seem to be debian and gentoo - the nice bit about these two is that you can install one build, and then update it constantly for ever after. What I dislike about my other redhat machine is that you install 7.2, but to get new packages you have to upgrade to 8. and then 9, etc... (It's almost like having windows!)

I use Gentoo now, and although it seems like a waste compiling packages, it does seem to offer a mild speedup, and makes it quite easy to create new packages installs. For example you can make a package which gets the latest CVS, downloads and compiles and installs it. In general I find it more reliable and easier to use than my Redhat box, but every now and again I find a rough patch and then you need more linux knowledge to fix your problem - but in general I found it *easier* to use

Most of the other distro's are horses for courses and somewhat similar. Suse and Mandrake seem to win on the desktop, Redhat is the best know (in the UK at least). I don't know if there is anything to split them - read the review on the net.
Re: Linux distros. [ In reply to ]
On Thu, 24 Apr 2003 23:10:22 -0500
Nathan Poznick <poznick@conwaycorp.net> wrote:

> Thus spake Vincent Colombo:
> > I've been bouncing back and forth between Slackware and Redhat 9
> > lately. I like the speed of Slack but the ease of package management
> > under RH9 is nice (especially after installing apt and Synaptic). At
> > the moment I'm running Slack9 and I'm trying to stick with it for a
> > while to try and learn more about it.
>


Mandrake 8.1 w/ plenty of updates. I use MDK 8.1 on my main box, and never bothered reinstalling at any point in the last year or more; I just constantly update to the point it's not MDK 8.1 anymore. I had mythtv running on here tested out, so I just copied the whole thing to another drive and put it in the TV box. both run variants of the Abit KT7-A series, so there was no real conflict.
Re: Linux distros. [ In reply to ]
Vincent Colombo wrote:
> Hello,
>
> This is kind of off topic but I was just wondering what distro most
> people on this list are running?
<SNIP>
> So, just wondering if there's a particular distro that's popular in this
> group or what.

According to the stats at the PVR Hardware database, Redhat appears to
be the clear leader. It should be noted, however, that the main
developers run Debian and this is the distro promoted by them.

HTH

--

Mark Cooper
http://netmangler.sourceforge.net - Network Management with Attitude
http://pvrhw.goldfish.org - Open Source PVR Hardware Database
Re: Linux distros. [ In reply to ]
Note that you're touching a traditional flame war. See this as my
personal opinion.

Edward Wildgoose wrote:

>The two favourites from those in the know usually seem to be debian and gentoo
>
I use Debian since about 2 years and I am getting quite sick of it.
apt-get and debconf is nice, but "stable" is constantly too old and
"unstable" is unstable, you have to fix things about once a month, and
get about 30MB of packages each day, and I don't want that, I don't have
time for constantly fixing things.
Hardware install is a *pain* on Debian.
Debian is also very late about security updates when compared to Red Hat.
Debian might be good for traditional servers (web, NFS, etc.) which run
basically unchanged for 2 years, but that's about it IMHO.

>Most of the other distro's are horses for courses and somewhat similar. Suse and Mandrake seem to win on the desktop, Redhat is the best know (in the UK at least). I don't know if there is anything to split them - read the review on the net.
>
I recently tried suse and found it very nice, apart from the fact that
the installer wants to fry your existing partitions by default and that
not all devices are recognized, but most are. I recently saw that I can
even run the first-time installer remotely via SSH or VNC (the latter
failed for me, though), something not even Debian offers. The next time
Debian unstable breaks in a major way (and it will), I might switch.

Compared to SuSe, Red Hat seemed unprofessional und unpolished. I don't
know Mandrake, but it's hard to imagine that they would do anything
better than SuSe. A plus for Red Hat is that it's completely
open-source, they release everything, while SuSe's installer is not, you
only have "permission to copy" for private use or something like that.

In the end, they are all "just" flavors of Linux, it's just a matter of
taste. (Not to discredit the massive amount of work they cost.)
Re: Linux distros. [ In reply to ]
Thus spake Ben Bucksch:
> I use Debian since about 2 years and I am getting quite sick of it.
> apt-get and debconf is nice, but "stable" is constantly too old and
> "unstable" is unstable, you have to fix things about once a month, and
> get about 30MB of packages each day, and I don't want that, I don't have
> time for constantly fixing things.

I've been using Debian for about 4 years, unstable for the last 2.
Stable is just that - stable. It's going to be rock solid. Unstable is
as the name implies - sometimes things break. You might want to look
into testing, it's sort of a happy median between stable and unstable.
Personally, I haven't had to reinstall this machine since I first
installed 4 years ago, and it's completely up-to-date.

> Hardware install is a *pain* on Debian.

How do you mean? I've never had any problems with it. At least that
kudzu crap doesn't pop up and claim it's going to do something useless
because there's no longer a mouse plugged in. I put in a TV card, add
the module to /etc/modules so it loads on boot, and it's good to go.
Same thing with a sound card. When I wanted to add a homebrew LIRC
serial IR receiver that I'd built, I installed the lirc packages with
apt, plugged in the receiver, and loaded lirc_serial.o.

> Debian is also very late about security updates when compared to Red Hat.
> Debian might be good for traditional servers (web, NFS, etc.) which run
> basically unchanged for 2 years, but that's about it IMHO.

This one I don't really understand... Are you using the security updates
for stable? Yes, Debian security updates for stable typically take a
couple of days to go in, because they have to be reviewed by the
security team, but if you're using unstable, a fixed package is usually
uploaded within an obscenely short time.

--
Nathan Poznick <poznick@conwaycorp.net>

Truth will set you free but first it will make you miserable.
RE: Linux distros. [ In reply to ]
> >The two favourites from those in the know usually seem to be debian and gentoo
> >
> I use Debian since about 2 years and I am getting quite sick of it.
> apt-get and debconf is nice, but "stable" is constantly too old and
> "unstable" is unstable, you have to fix things about once a month, and
> get about 30MB of packages each day, and I don't want that, I don't have
> time for constantly fixing things.

[.Note that I have no experience of Debian, however, lots of people seem to like it. Personally I have only ever used Redhat and Gentoo...]

However, (for me) gentoo has a reasonable way of tackling the above problems. Basically *all* versions of all packages are available through portage. Some of these are marked unstable, and the default install ignores these.

What this means is you can do an "update all" type operation and it only grabs the latest *stable* updates to everything, however, if you have a need to grab an unstable package then this is quite straightforward and so you end up with a mix of stable and unstable (the three latest versions might all be marked unstable - you can even pick which release you want).

If something goes wrong, then it is easy to revert back to a previous version of the package. The installer appears to know exactly which files are installed (like any good packager I suppose), and can completely remove the results of the install and apply the previous version again. Dependencies appear to be handled extremely well too (like with Debian if you ask for a package it auto installs the (stable) version of all the dependent packages)

It's not perfect - I won't go into the details, suffice to say they are being actively worked on though.

The biggest theoretical gripe about gentoo is the compiling of all your packages. All I can say is that for me it hasn't proved to be a *practical* problem. If you have a network then you can compile once and distribute compiled version - basically it auto uses pre-compiled packages if they are available (kind of), it's just that the usual concept of a package in gentoo is a small text file describing where to get the source from and what the compile options are (ie works best if you have a decent net connection). Also for the bigger packages, Mozilla, Open Office, you can get a pre-compiled version from gentoo.org. Perhaps someone else also supplies pre-compiled versions of the normal packages as well - I dont know of such a place, but it's theoretically possible

I think for most hobbiest users gentoo might not be ready for the big time though. Once you step outside of the "working" stuff it can quickly get complicated. But for most enthusiasts I imagine that you will find it as much of a contender as the other main distributions.

Based on the comments in emails - I suspect a poll of this list might put gentoo and debian into the top 2 places? Anyone want to run a poll? (remember that's most "popular" in this list, not "best")
Re: Linux distros. [ In reply to ]
On Thu, Apr 24, 2003 at 11:10:22PM -0500, Nathan Poznick wrote:
> Debian, of course. If you're going to go to the trouble of installing
> apt, why not just use Debian? MZ's 0.8 packages have been working
> wonderfully for me.

Because the trouble of 'rpm -Uh apt-*.rpm' is much less than the headache
of a debian install, configuration, and daily usage.

> --
> Nathan Poznick <poznick@conwaycorp.net>

--
Matthew S. Hallacy FUBAR, LART, BOFH Certified
http://www.poptix.net GPG public key 0x01938203
Re: Linux distros. [ In reply to ]
On Fri, Apr 25, 2003 at 08:18:18AM -0500, Nathan Poznick wrote:
> How do you mean? I've never had any problems with it. At least that
> kudzu crap doesn't pop up and claim it's going to do something useless
> because there's no longer a mouse plugged in.

Actually, it's good for a few reasons:

1) Crap, I forgot to plug the mouse back in
2) Crap, the Mouse/PS2 port/etc is fried.
3) Depending on the selection you make, it will reconfigure XFree86
and gpm with the new settings.

If you don't like it, you have a couple options -- either select
'ignore configuration change' or run 'chkconfig kudzu off'

The benefits far outweigh the 5 second annoyance when you forgot to
plug something in (and you should be notified anyway)

> I put in a TV card, add
> the module to /etc/modules so it loads on boot, and it's good to go.
> Same thing with a sound card. When I wanted to add a homebrew LIRC
> serial IR receiver that I'd built, I installed the lirc packages with
> apt, plugged in the receiver, and loaded lirc_serial.o.

Really? I put in my TV card and kudzu automatically configured it for me.
Not only that, it did it in /etc/modules.conf, without obliterating my own
personal changes there (unlike debian).

> --
> Nathan Poznick <poznick@conwaycorp.net>

--
Matthew S. Hallacy FUBAR, LART, BOFH Certified
http://www.poptix.net GPG public key 0x01938203
Re: Linux distros. [ In reply to ]
Nathan Poznick wrote:

>>Hardware install is a *pain* on Debian.
>>
>>
>How do you mean? I've never had any problems with it. At least that
>kudzu crap doesn't pop up and claim it's going to do something useless
>because there's no longer a mouse plugged in. I put in a TV card, add
>the module to /etc/modules so it loads on boot, and it's good to go.
>Same thing with a sound card.
>
Yeah, if it was that easy. Maybe you had luck with your hardware. I'll
save you the details, but I often need a week to get a single component
working, and that's just unacceptable. I'd like to plug the card in and
the start an hw-installer of the OS and it recognizes the card and
installs or at least suggests the right driver module and userland
packages and configures them. Hardware installation must typically take
10-60 minutes, as it does on Windows (unless things break).
SuSe is close to that, at least during initial installation (not sure
afterwards), often better than Windows even. It still doesn't recognize
exotic hardware, though, even if supported in general under Linux, nor
do I think it tells me when something is known not to be supported (by
the best of their knowledge), so I don't need to bother much trying to
get it working.

Debian essentially has no hardware recognition whatsoever. You have to
figure out yourself which driver you need (sometimes there are several
possible ones) and to install it yourself (often the docs are basically
useless). That alone is too much work for me, and too much to ask for
the majority of users.

Debian is about the last big distro I would recommend for usage in a
bleeding edge multimedia machine - just to warn newbies. I would
recommend to buy a copy of SuSe. But again, just my personal opinion, I
guess others disagree.

>When I wanted to add a homebrew LIRC
>serial IR receiver that I'd built, I installed the lirc packages with
>apt, plugged in the receiver, and loaded lirc_serial.o.
>
Same did I, and I configured it with debconf, yet the package did not
write the config correctly, IIRC. I didn't work until I manually
added/copied a file.

>Yes, Debian security updates for stable typically take a
>couple of days to go in, because they have to be reviewed by the
>security team, but if you're using unstable, a fixed package is usually
>uploaded within an obscenely short time.
>
The initial fix often takes 1-2 weeks longer than on Red Hat. And it's
not the quality checks which are the reason, because the initial fix is
often broken and they need to push an update (exactly what MS is
ridiculed for, BTW). Not even mentioning that e.g. the Mozilla version
in stable has security holes without end (both in potato back then and
now again in woody), and noone cares, although they are fixed in
upstream and I told them.

SuSe does active security reviews.
Re: Linux distros. [ In reply to ]
On Fri, 25 Apr 2003, Nathan Poznick wrote:

> Thus spake Ben Bucksch:
> > I use Debian since about 2 years and I am getting quite sick of it.
> > apt-get and debconf is nice, but "stable" is constantly too old and
> > "unstable" is unstable, you have to fix things about once a month, and
> > get about 30MB of packages each day, and I don't want that, I don't have
> > time for constantly fixing things.
>
> I've been using Debian for about 4 years, unstable for the last 2.
> Stable is just that - stable. It's going to be rock solid. Unstable is
> as the name implies - sometimes things break. You might want to look
> into testing, it's sort of a happy median between stable and unstable.
> Personally, I haven't had to reinstall this machine since I first
> installed 4 years ago, and it's completely up-to-date.
>
> > Hardware install is a *pain* on Debian.
>
> How do you mean? I've never had any problems with it. At least that
> kudzu crap doesn't pop up and claim it's going to do something useless
> because there's no longer a mouse plugged in. I put in a TV card, add
> the module to /etc/modules so it loads on boot, and it's good to go.
> Same thing with a sound card. When I wanted to add a homebrew LIRC
> serial IR receiver that I'd built, I installed the lirc packages with
> apt, plugged in the receiver, and loaded lirc_serial.o.
>
> > Debian is also very late about security updates when compared to Red Hat.
> > Debian might be good for traditional servers (web, NFS, etc.) which run
> > basically unchanged for 2 years, but that's about it IMHO.
>
> This one I don't really understand... Are you using the security updates
> for stable? Yes, Debian security updates for stable typically take a
> couple of days to go in, because they have to be reviewed by the
> security team, but if you're using unstable, a fixed package is usually
> uploaded within an obscenely short time.

A little off topic, but that is why Debian is having a hard time breaking
into the server market. Security updates from Red Hat netowrk beat Debain
stable updates by sometimes days. In the case of the Sendmail and Samba
exploits, that would have been disasterous for an admin.

Debian is fine from a hobbyists point of view, however.

>
>
Re: Linux distros. [ In reply to ]
This thread is extremely off-topic, and is ending now.

Isaac
Re: Linux distros. [ In reply to ]
On Fri, Apr 25, 2003 at 11:01:10AM -0400, josephc wrote:
> A little off topic, but that is why Debian is having a hard time breaking
> into the server market. Security updates from Red Hat netowrk beat Debain
> stable updates by sometimes days. In the case of the Sendmail and Samba
> exploits, that would have been disasterous for an admin.
>
> Debian is fine from a hobbyists point of view, however.

Debian is also not a company. It is a group of volunteering developers.

Not bad from my standpoint.

--
:wq!

Matthew Daubenspeck
http://www.oddprocess.org
Re: Linux distros. [ In reply to ]
josephc wrote:

>>Are you using the security updates
>>for stable? Yes, Debian security updates for stable typically take a
>>couple of days to go in, because they have to be reviewed by the
>>security team, but if you're using unstable, a fixed package is usually
>>uploaded within an obscenely short time.
>>
>>
>>
>Security updates from Red Hat netowrk beat Debain
>stable updates by sometimes days.
>
Oh, how I understand what you meant. I meant security updates for both
unstable and stable. They don't even tell you when a package in unstable
is updated because of security, which doesn't make things easier. Even
there, the xchat exploit last year which I was following took 1-2 weeks
(after Red Hat released their fix) until the fix got into *unstable*.

Anyways, back to work :).
Re: Linux distros. [ In reply to ]
At 05:11 PM 4/25/2003 +0200, Ben Bucksch wrote:
[...]
>Oh, how I understand what you meant. I meant security updates for both
>unstable and stable. They don't even tell you when a package in unstable
>is updated because of security, which doesn't make things easier. Even
>there, the xchat exploit last year which I was following took 1-2 weeks
>(after Red Hat released their fix) until the fix got into *unstable*.

Actually, "they" do ... the relevant "they" being the debian-security
mailing list, which reports on security updates for Stable, Testing, and
Unstable.

What Unstablee does not do is have a repository of security updates that is
separate from the regular updates.
Re: Linux distros. [ In reply to ]
Isaac,

I apologize for getting this started. I just wanted to see if there was
a distribution that most people in this group were using to build and
run MythTV. I didn't intend for it to turn into an argument. I guess I
should have expected it.

Sorry,

Vince

On Friday, April 25, 2003, at 10:02 AM, Isaac Richards wrote:

> This thread is extremely off-topic, and is ending now.
>
> Isaac
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@snowman.net
> http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>
Re: Linux distros. [ In reply to ]
Vincent Colombo wrote
> So, just wondering if there's a particular distro that's popular in
> this group or what.

I run Debian. good package system (apt/deb) that is often touted
as being "better" than the RPM system used by RedHat, but that's
all about "OS religion". I'm sure they both work... :)

-Chris