I usually ignore these threads, but this one is starting to get an unpleasant tone, so let me try to encourage the proponents of the various distros to moderate their insistance before we get to a flame war.
For the record, I like Debian. It is also, by now, the only full-size distro I feel totally familiar with. Were I to install Slackware, or Red Hat, or Mandrake, or SuSE, I feel sure I would encounter some of the same unpleasantness that an earlier poster found with everything except SuSE. But this observation doesn't tell you much about those other distros, except that I am out of practice using them. For better or for worse, Linux has fragmented noticably at the distro level, leading most people to be familiar with the quirks of one of the distros, but few of us to be current on several of them. For a newcomer, each of the major distros ... at least the ones still being maintained, which includes Slackware, Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, and others (but I'm not sure if Caldera is still actively maintained) ... has its advantages and disadvantages. It does help to describe the strengths (and weaknesses) of a distribution you have real familiarity with. But vague criticisms like "really buggy" and "installation is notoriously difficult" do not really help a beginner make an informed decision. Oh, one factual correction -- Debian does not default to a GUI install; you have to select an X "task" package at install time to get a GUI install. Last time I checked (several releases back), neither did Slackware. At 06:25 AM 5/28/02 +0000, Richard Adams wrote: >On Tuesday 28 May 2002 02:27, David Benfell wrote: > > > Red Hat, TurboLinux, and Caldera are really buggy. > >I certanly would not say that of redhat. > > > > > My experience with Slackware was that it was simply too primitive. It > > probably has improved since, but when I tried it, you had to build too > > much software to get the system into a usable state. Some of the > > required builds had booby traps that made it even more difficult. I > > never did get Netscape running on that version. > >Slackware is NOT primative, its the nearest to "unix" one can get which is >why it may seem primative to you. > > > > > Does Slackware use glibc yet? > >Yes. > > > In a subsequent post, you say you want to learn the nuts and bolts. > > This is good, but is really not dependent on the distribution you > > choose. Most distributions install with a default to come up in GUI > > mode, but you can modify /etc/inittab, changing the default run level > > to come up in text mode. You can then use the startx command to bring > > up X whenever you need the GUI. > >Looks like you have never "installed" slackware yourself as there is one big >differance, you start learning with the install of slackware, where as you >dont with most others. > > > > > The final argument for SuSE, I believe, is that of all the major > > distributions, SuSE comes closest to the File Hierarchy Standard. All > > the distributions are moving in that direction, so for learning > > purposes, SuSE may offer you a bit of a head start. > >Which is what makes "once again" slackware uniq. > >I have said all of this many times here on this list, i have most distro's >running on different systems here and at my workplace, from what i have seen >here when the question is asked, which distro's is the best to learn linux, >slackware pops up. > >And BTW: 8.1 is out i see from www.slackware.com -- -----------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"-------------- Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo Palo Alto, California, USA [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
