[ale] Linux Distribution Recommendations

[Chris Ricker]

On Mon, 22 Apr 1996, Jay Lovell wrote:

> Of the various and sundry Linux distributions out on the market now, can
> anyone make a recommendation as to a particular distribution to choose or
> avoid?  Long term goals are to have a UNIX workstation at home running one of
> the flavors of Motif available for Linux (so that is also a consideration).

I've tried both slackware (several releases) and red hat (2.0, 2.1, and
3.0.3).  Personally, I recommend RedHat over Slackware.  It's package
system is *really* nice if you want to have a long-term setup that is
easily upgradeble.  Most commercial motifs are even available in rpm
format, so even that will be easy.  Also, the latest Slackware (3.0) is
kinda old, and is considered only gamma-level release by its developers
(if I remember right, the last official release is 2.3).

> I currently have the InfoMagic Slackware distribution running on an I386DX-25
> with 8MB of RAM and a 200MB HD, but that will be being upgraded shortly to at
> least a 486-33 board.  Slackware seems to be OK as far as installing it goes,
> but upgrading seems to be a problem.  I understand you have to remove a
> package before you can replace it with a newer version and that could mean
> that config files could "disappear" before you realize you should have backed
> something up.  Red Hat appears to solve that problem, but I've read some
> complaints regarding their setup and install utility.

The main advantage I see with RedHat is their upgrade ability.  I never
noticed anything terribly wrong with either slackware or redhat's
setup/install.  Perhaps this was from someone who couldn't handle the fact
that RedHat (and Debian) use SysV-ish init scripts, while Slackware uses
BSD-ish scripts.

later,
chris