Jason Greenwood wrote:
Russ,
You'll get lots of answers here but as someone who has tried several different distros this is my opinion.
A "distro" consists of several things.
a) The Linux kernel, these are all the same in that they are all Linux. Some distro's modify (apply patches etc.) these some but basically Linux is Linux is Linux. These are referred to by their version number eg 2.2.x, 2.4.x. Even numbers indicate stable kernels eg. 2.2.x, 2.4.x, odd numbers indicate development kernels eg 2.5.x. The next major stable kernel release will be 2.6.x, but there are NUMEROUS .x releases within each kernel tree.
b) installation utilities, these can be comprehensive and graphical (eg Mandrake) or sparse and text driven (eg Debian). Some installers are easier than others (Mandrake's IMHO is one of the best, especially for newb's), though Knoppix's is very good too. Some of these are Open Source (eg Mandrake) some are proprietary (eg Suse's YAST/YAST2 installer). The installer gets Linux running on your system, it can help you partition drives and select software to be installed etc.
c) Packages. These are the individual pieces of software that are bundled with the distro. These are almost always open source GPL'd programs taken from off the net or from contributors to the distro. Some distro's employ pleople directly who help maintain certain packages. These packages include Window Managers/Graphical Desktops, eg. KDE, Gnome, Icewm etc. The distro's choose packagesd based on their focus, eg desktop, server etc. Some distro's serve just as firewalls (eg smoothwall) so they have very little other software to them,.
d) Configuration utilities. These can be either Open Source or Proprietary. ALL of Mandrake's are GPL'd, keeping within the ideals of "free" software. IMHO, Mandrake's are far superior to any other distro. They are more comprehensive, complete and centralized within the Mandrake Control Centre. Plus, they have command line counterparts that can be used if your graphical display is not running (eg you only have a command prompt to work with).
There are many other things to discuss such as the graphical rendering engine (XFree86) and GCC versions but the above are the basics that separate distro's. The other thing is that there are "source based distro's" and "roll your own" distro's but for a newb the above applies generally.
My .0002c worth.
Regards,
Jason
PS, yes, Mandrake was a "fork" of RedHat (though they both basically just package GPL'd software) but it has diverged significantly since then to become IMHO a superior distro, especially for those new to Linux
Russ wrote:
HI All, I actually have 2 questions here:1. What is the difference between the different distros? They are all Linux aren't they? Correct me if I am wrong but didn't Mandrake start out as Red Hat? 2. If a person wanted to run different flavors on one drive, what would be the best way to partition that drive? Could they all share the swap partition? What about the partition that holds all user data? Thanks Russ
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