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Forum: Geek Forum
Topic: favorite linux
started by: kai

Posted by RenegadeSnark on Jul. 17 2001,18:44

slackware owns. It isn't controlled by any corporation, so it's not "lets rush and give out a distribution ASAP", it's "let's do it right".

There's none of that buggy frontend crap or poorly named daemons that Redhat is famous for. You put in the install disks and get a prompt. You then set up your partitions and mount any drives you may need, before typing setup to automate package install.

Setup isn't an X-Windows "impossible-to-do-anything-not-default" installer, it's a text based installer, and you have the chance at the command prompt to do whatever you want.

Posted by Spydir on Jul. 17 2001,19:03

Slackware. Flat out. ALl Renegade said, and it's simply the most pimping distro out there. They don't need any flashy shit, people just now "Slackware's the shit".

Thing is, their webpage got defaced the other day and there's been no announcement what caused it. Personally, I think it was probably a bad password. Even it there's need for a security patch, it only makes for 5 security patches in it's many, many years. Compare that to the hundreds of Red Hat and Debian patches, and slack's the best.

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Net Syndrome - < http://www.netsyndrome.net/ >
Spydir Web - < http://www.netsyndrome.net/spydirweb/ >

Posted by demonk on Jul. 17 2001,19:31

Slackware is the best, only if you have previous experience with it, setting it up, and with Linux in general. For someone who is setting up their first, second, and sometimes their third Linux box, Slackware will just be too much stuff at once to deal with.

I'm not very impressed with RedHat 7.1 myself. It seems thrown together just so they could say that the have a 2.4.x kernel distro. I've never used Debian, so I can't really comment on that. I'm actualy impressed with Mandrake Linux. I've used their 8.0 release a lot, and it supported all my hardware, even my WinTV turner card, right after the install. It had a much more polished, integrated feeling to it than RedHat. It is what RedHat wished they had released. If your new to Linux, or just don't have the time to mess with Slackware, try Mandrake. It's GUI install is very flexible so you can do very customized installs, not jut the plain vinilla one. Anyway, that is just my experience, I could always be wrong.

Posted by damien_s_lucifer on Jul. 17 2001,21:03

Damn user-friendliness! Slackware is not the easiest to get installed, but as everyone else has pointed out so far it's solid and secure. Plus it gets along with Windows (I'm quad-booting

Posted by Spydir on Jul. 17 2001,22:58

I ran mandrake 7.0 and 7.1 for a while, and it was really nice. It's a little newbie-centric with the install, but once it's up and running it can go hardcore. I haven't tried out 8.0 yet, but I might build up some shitty little computer soon which I'll probably use to test things (I've never actually seen how rm -rf / turns out, and I don't care what you say, I wanna try it

), and I might stick 8 on there just to tinker a little.

I've been thinking of setting up debian on my windows box so it'll be a dualboot machine. Not to sure if I wanna do that, though. Getting low on disk space...

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Net Syndrome - < http://www.netsyndrome.net/ >
Spydir Web - < http://www.netsyndrome.net/spydirweb/ >

Posted by incubus on Jul. 18 2001,00:22

Mandrake is great for linux beginners. It's a bit bloated though.

Debian is solid and security-focused. Updates are a breeze though initial install can be a pain. It runs on anything.

RedHat is like mandrake, but less 'cute'. It's quite solid, and theres lots of support out there. I run 7,1 (seawolf) SMP now, but previously I ran 6.1. 7,1 has made a lot of headway!

Slackware: I've no personal experience of this, but have been told it's pretty much RedHat for the person that's used Linux before.

Never tried SUSE or TurboLinux.

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-- incubus
As I chase the leaves like the words I never find ...

Posted by kai on Jul. 18 2001,05:59

ok I know we've had this before...but I still want to know what you guys think. Seriously why is slackware better than debian which is better than redhat. whats the difference?

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Don't worry about the world ending today... It's already tomorrow in Australia. Unless you're in Australia... (then start worrying)

Posted by Unexplained on Jul. 18 2001,11:04

Debian GNU/Linux r0x0rz j00r b0x0rz.

Installation
Installation is very easy, you only need two 1.44 MB disks and an Internet connection. Every package is downloaded over the Internet during the installation.

Packages
Debian uses .deb packages, which can be installed with dpkg. The combination of apt-get and dpkg is a very powerful tool, often underestimated. With just ONE command, I can upgrade my ENITRE distribution (or just the updated packages) to a newer version. 'apt-get dist-upgrade' does the trick.
Packages are very up to date.
Dependencies are very well handled as well.

Security
Debian has a reputation as 'very secure distro'. Various time Debian has not been vurnable to an exploit while other distro's like Red Hat were.
Bugs are often solved within 24 hours and can be updated with the apt-get command.

Docs & Support
Debian has very good support from it's community. People on irc.debian.org are very friendly.
The installation manual is also top notch (a good read for newbies and novice users).

GNU/Commercial
Debian is, AFAIK, the only distribution which is 100\% GPL licenced. You can choose to install additional 'non-free' and 'contrib' packages, but it's optional.

Debian: because I want the best.

Posted by The_Stomper on Jul. 18 2001,12:10

Yeah, Mandrake 8 is bloated. But it's nice. Never crashed out on me, even though I was basically learning Linux while I installed it. Definitely 0wnz for Linux n00bs - or people who are still stuck on Windoze.

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I'm sorry - you must have mistaken me for someone who gives a fuck.