[ale] Distro Opinion

[BHa at ixl.com]

(1) 
Debian.  The release/stable and frozen versions are rock-solid: 
performance and security-wise.
<SPAN 
class=954163914-05072000>Â Â Â Â  The upgrade scheme 
(dselect/apt-get) is much imrpoving compared to Red-Hat rpm, 
IMHO!
<SPAN 
class=954163914-05072000>Â 
(2) 
Slackware.  If you know what you are doing, nothing beats 
Slackware!
<SPAN 
class=954163914-05072000>Â 
<SPAN 
class=954163914-05072000>IÂ recommend against Red-Hat, unless you monitor 
their security list and get the updates <FONT color=#0000ff 
face=Arial size=2>ASAP
when 
it is announced.  Its advantages have been well-supported (albeit 
commercially), easy to
setup 
and to use.  Unless you are a beginner, need a lot of hand-holding, 
and your server will
not be 
exposed to the Internet, try it and its sibblings, including 
Mandrake.  I still like
<SPAN 
class=954163914-05072000>Slackware for beginner, since you will learn more about 
Linux without the GUI/User-friendly 
<SPAN 
class=954163914-05072000>interface stuff.<FONT color=#0000ff 
face=Arial size=2>Â  (My sys admin self is 
showing now!)
<SPAN 
class=954163914-05072000>Â 
<SPAN 
class=954163914-05072000>Bao  

  <FONT face=Tahoma 
  size=2>-----Original Message-----From: Jeff Hubbs 
  [mailto:jhubbs at telocity.com]Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2000 11:59 
  PMTo: ale at ale.orgSubject: [ale] Distro 
  OpinionI would like a Linux distribution for my new 
  system - the one that will be my "main" system and I'd liek to hear opinions 
  on what distribution you'd think I would have the most success with given its 
  architecture and desired roles. 
  It's an Athlon 700, based on an Asus K7V mobo with onboard sound that, at 
  the time I got it at least, required the ALSA drivers to get the onboard sound 
  (AC97) to work.  There are two ATA-66 IDE controllers on the mobo with a 
  20GB disk on each.  I've got Ethernet, narrow SCSI-2, and 3Dfx Voodoo3 
  3500 TV video cards (the version that has NTSC  video I/O).  I have 
  my oen partition scheme worked out among the two drives that does make use of 
  some software RAID, so I want the installation process to utilize the scheme I 
  set up. 
  This machine is going to be one of several behind a firewall attached to 
  DSL.  In addition to being my primary "sit-at" system, it will also act 
  as a Samba server for any and all Windows machines on the house LAN.  I 
  will want to have FTP and NFS serving take place as well. 
  I also want to get on a good path to be able to get the Voodoo3 3500 TV 
  card supported someday for NTSC video I/O and also to get the onboard sound 
  supported. 
  I started out with Mandrake 7.0-2 on this machine, and I got real 
  frustrated because there was a lot of stuff like Samba, wu-ftpd, and so on 
  that appeared to be present but not functioning, and although I 
  probably could have figured out how to eventually get all that stuff working, 
  I would do so in fear of missing some sort of prerequisite and I had and still 
  have plenty to figure out as it is! 
  The machine is now running Red Hat 6.2, but it's a bit long in the tooth 
  already and I'm interested in the ATA-66 and ReiserFS support I've read about 
  in Mandrake 7.1.  I am most comfortable with Red Hat and its derivatives 
  but I am open to suggestions.  I would be interested in a distro that has 
  a good mechanism for regular updates that won't go around breaking stuff, and 
  IÂ would appreciate having really useful documentation. 
  I generally download distros but I am open to suggestions regarding paying 
  for tech support, whether by paying for a boxed distro or by buying support 
  services separately. Â