Jason wrote: > I'm getting rid of my Mac work laptop and will soon be > getting a new Stinkpad (T30 I believe). I have been > out of the daily use Linux world for about a year or > so, so I was wondering what thoughts folks would have > on recommended distros for work purposes. I have been > using mostly RedHat/Mandrake since about 1997 but am > willing to change. > > I do a good amount of security testing with my laptops > and a small amount of programming. Nothing real CPU > intensive besides running VMWare for writing > documents, etc.
VMware needs RAM more than it needs CPU power, I thought. How much time do you want to spend getting it just right? If you want to throw a CD at it and get on with your life, then install Debian through a KNOPPIX CD. The Debian advantage is that from then on, you'll be able to upgrade incrementally. There will be no big bang upgrades where half your apps stop working for a day or two while you sort everything out. If you install cron-apt (highly recommended), you'll even get email notification when it's time to update, especially the security updates. OTOH, if you want to abandon all semblance of a normal life and devote each of your remaining hours on this mortal plane to Linux maintenance, customization, and tweaking, go with Gentoo. (-: That's what I've done, and I don't regret it a bit. Seriously, if it's your first time, it could easily take a week to get Gentoo to a usable state. Debian/KNOPPIX (or Mandrake, Fedora, etc.) should be closer to an hour. But Gentoo does keep you on the cutting edge. I didn't have to go outside of Gentoo to get APM, DVD ripping, DVD playback (and lots of other video formats), 3D acceleration, and lots of other cool stuff (like a bunch of games I never play (-: ). I'm assuming you know your way around Linux enough that you're not intimidated by things like fdisk, editing /etc/fstab, or building a kernel. If that weren't the case, we'd be discussing Mandrake and Fedora. -- Bob Miller K<bob> kbobsoft software consulting http://kbobsoft.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ EuG-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
