On Tue, 21 Dec 1999, Ayal Sharon wrote:
> I have not not yet installed Linux in my home PC, and I am trying to figure
> out which version to install.
latest version if you can get it, but if you don't mind a slightly older
one (usually not a problem) me and my friends here will gladly send you
older revisions we don't use anymore for free (right guys?)
> What really is the difference (if there is any) between Red Hat, Slackware,
> SuSe, Caldera, Debian etc. etc. ?
ahh, now we are talking distribution and not version, and that's almost
a religious question...
Slackware: I haven't used it for years, some few stay loyal but
apperently almost no one is added to that small crowd. it is less
"organized" for businesses and more tuned for home users or for
sysadmins who know hat they are doing (yes, I do believe you need less
experiance to control Red Hat)
Red Hat: the distro of kuuuuuuuuulam. a 20 billion dollar company that
succeeded to cater to almost everybody's needs. sets lots of important
standards but worries about diversifying the products too much, hence
there are derivative distros that are built on it: PhatLinux (runs off
fat), Mandrake Linux (everything recompiled for P5 and up processors) to
name a few. good to study if you are going to use it to get a job, as
90% of the businesses out there use it these days.
Caldera: good guys, try to fix you up with a fully-GUI KISS interfaced
OS with Netware connectivity and terminals-no-a-must OS. possibly the
best to install as a workstation for a computer illiterate person that
only needs to surf and do Office stuff. (note: in THAT category it's the
best, it doesn't mean it's less optimal for servers or something!)
Mandrake: as mentioned above. a Red Hat derivative, my favorite, 'nuff
said.
SuSE: like Caldera, Red Hat and others, it runs on RPMs, so software can
exchange hands between istros, but that's where the similarity ends.
SuSE is a product from a German company and was evidently writting with
an Excellent "yeke" sense of perfection. it is possibly the best sold
Distribution of the lot (yes, more than Red Hat) and is the most popular
one in Europe and for good reasons. management is quite easy (though a
bit centralistic for a do-it-yourself guy like me, but the YaST config
system can be overriden :)
in a Just world, this amazing distribution should have also conquered
the Americas, but it's not, so Red Hat became the standard in Israel. I
highly recommend it, probably mny second favorite distro.
Debian: the last of the mohicans :-) one of the only distros that never
went public and never wants to (although Corel Linux and others are
based on it). it is still developped by a network of unpayed volunteers
and is surprisingly solid even when the number of contributors grows
(not talking stable, of course it is! :-)
has arguably the most options and tricks and gimmicks and is a Linux
geeks most fun playground, but it's for SERIOUS hackers in many
parts: if you're not on the mailing lists or hate reading docs, you will
not know how to control or use half of the esoteria on the
system... it's the distro of choice at VA-Linux (and so also on
linux.com) and possibly most of the veteran kernel hackers.
Turbo-Linux: never installed it, supposed to have forked out of Red Hat
a long time ago but looks totally different now. it's the biggest player
in the Asian market, the company says it sells more copies in Japan than
Microsoft is selling Windows! so if it's an indication of anything, it's
worth the test! Turbo are really aiming their R&D at high-availability,
high-power low-cost services (clustering technologies of all sorts) but
is probably also an excellent workstation/server.
> Which would you recommend to someone who is completely new to Linux? I would
> prefer a version which makes it easy to switch back and forth between Linux
> and Windows.
they can all dual boot. if you are planning on being a programmer,
for SuSE probably. if more into system administration, the
(Israeli) market says Red Hat/Mandrake. and if you are a C programmer
that likes to tinker and play with every little gimmick in the system,
possibly contribute stuff back to the project, maybe Debian is for you.
as a newcomer to the world of Linux and open source, let me give you a
warning about bomb dropping: in western movies we know how easy it is to
start a fight between two people and the whole bar joins in. If you walk
into a crowded mall in Jerusalem and shout "Allah hoo Akbar!" 5 people
will pull out guns and shoot you and 10 more people will pull out their
guns and shoot the first 5 out of the confusion (according to my friend
Yishai it's the cheapest way to create a mass terror incident without
using even a cold weapon)
Linux is the wild west of geekdom, and linux-il doubly so. do not, EVER,
ask the list to tell you which distro is the best, or which Editor, or
which windows manager, etc... the best way is to take the time to try
them all and decide for yourself. otherwise all hell will break loose on
the mailing list (it has in the past :-)
welcome to the family!
--
Ira Abramov ; whois:IA58 ; www.scso.com ; all around Linux enthusiast
"MSDOS didn't get as bad as it is overnight -- it took over ten years
of careful development."
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