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The Linux Distribution Game
Ladislav Bodnar writes: "I have installed and used many Linux distributions. The editorial, entitled The Linux Distribution Game is the result of my personal experiences - it aspires to be a gentle introduction to the many distributions out there. The rest of the DistroWatch site provides pure facts; this is the only exception, although I promise to be as unbiased as possible." This page is nearly worth it for the logos alone; the links to obscure and semi-obscure distributions are a nice resource.
I'd prefer a bit more in-depth reviewage, but I guess you can only do so many install/wipe cycles before you get bored. What would be really useful would be a page with a number of these reviews for smaller distros.
/Brian
I'm not sure this applies to the average person who is attempting to decide which Linux to install and use, but it's interesting to see a few of them evaluated from a dummied-down perspective. I guess a few of these may be on their way out as viable commercial alternatives, but from the response we saw on Slackware's demise (not), there seems to be no lack of friendly competition and enticements.
Partly off-topic I guess but...
What's the situation with Linux Standards Base? Is any of the distros 100% compatible? Having a single standard would make life whole lot easier for users and for companies. For example: NVIDIA offers Linux-drivers for their cards. In their download-page there are packages for just about every major distro there is. It causes extra hassle for them. And I guess the situation is more or less similar for other companies as well.
How long will it be untill we start to see software that is not offered in several packages (for each distro), but in one package with instructions "this package will install on a LSB-compliant distribution"?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I dunno, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but I think you should just need to install a distro once, and then from then on, you should be able to do kernel upgrades, etc. (when you really need to) without having to upgrade the whole distro.
Debian is very close to this. Unfortunately the extremely slow release schedule is a major annoyance with Debian. If you run testing or unstable on your desktop machine you should be happy with relatively recent versions of everything. If you run stable you'll find rather old versions of everything patched to hell. Maybe I'm just disillusioned but Debian just doesn't cut it for a server OS. I love the ease of upgrading but using Apache 1.2.9 and similarly outdated releases of mysql, postgresql, and php4 is a major annoyance. I could build the packages myself but there goes the whole ease of use... So for my desktops and non-production servers I run Debian unstable or testing but on my production servers I'm planning on moving 100% to FreeBSD. I don't think any Linux distribution has the ease of use and updating while using up to date software that FreeBSD has with the ports system. Some people were working on copying the FreeBSD system while using the Linux kernel (it was a debian group) but I don't think they are very active...
Ports + CVS update + linux kernel would be awesome...
I think it all depends on what you want to do, in regards to what type of UNIX or pseudo-UNIX (linux) you want to use. If you need support for all the latest hardware and oddball stuff, linux is your best bet. If you want to play games, linux is your best bet, although I know several people that successfully run games on FreeBSD, albeit in linux-compat mode.
;)
I still haven't been able to get my Voodoo 5 working under X, except in 640x480x8bbp (yuck), but I think that's more of an issue with XF86Free...
I used all the major versions of linux at one point, and certain things didn't work with each distro (I'll not go into detail here). I ended up with Libranet (Debian) and I was pretty happy with it until I tried to upgrade Netscape one day with apt-get and it totally hosed my system.
That's when I decided to go with BSD. I installed OpenBSD as a desktop and ran it for many months with nary an issue, I even upgraded it and got X 4.x.x running without too much trouble (although it did seem like a PITA at the time). The only reason I quit running OpenBSD as a desktop was because of not enough software in ports.
I've run several FreeBSD machines and, compared to linux, they're a dream to install, configure and maintain. I also run a few NetBSD machines, which I enjoy because it's a bit more challenging to get up and running, but then it's almost as easy as FreeBSD to maintain.
I really hated compiling new kernels in linux; it's too easy with *BSD. I found Slackware (BSD-lite as I like to call it) and Debian to be good primers for *BSD, so I don't totally discount linux; it's a good learning experience.
However, I won't go back to linux as my main operating system. Ever. *BSD is that good. Sure, I may not be able to play games, but I have plenty of other stuff to keep me busy, like studying for various certifications (Solaris, HP-UX, Cisco) and playing with old Sun, HP and Cisco hardware...
entrox: sounds like you need to cvsup those ports, buddy!
The only big difference is marketing: MS touts XP and ME as _the_ OSes to get. However, they're an interested party - they want to sell their latest and greatest, and more importantly, push their technologies like .NET, and so forth.
Now, with the linux, you got 4 "big" distros. RH, Mandrake, Debian and SUSE. I think in some expo SUSE or MDK was voted as the most popular, but RH is the oldest commercial offering.
Here's a little round-up:
RedHat - oldest commercial offering with most ties with traditional companies and I think a certification problem. I heard, though, that dir structure is a bit messy and new releases are sometimes rushed and hence are quite buggy. Usually a default newbie distro.
SUSE - big in europe, getting in US too lately. At least as user-friendly as RH. Don't know much more about it. I think it uses RPM, like redhat.
Mandrake - used to be based entirely on RH with a few minor tweaks but then branched into a separate distro. At least as user-friendly as RH, uses the same RPM system, a bit less buggy?
Debian - "techies" distro. Less eye candy, more stability and security than other big 3. Apt-get package management is supposedly better and easier to use than RPM. It's not a commercial distro, it follows the same development pattern as Linux kernel itself. It does less hand-holding than other big 3 distros, so it can be intimidating to a new user. I think it also has more binary packages than any other distro.
One thing that you're missing is that separate distros often share the development effort between each other, for instance they all use the same kernel, 3 out of 4 use the same package management scheme, most of the core things are the same, and so forth. Contrast this with MS and MacOS, who obviously can't share their internals.
I think this scattering of distros is a very healthy thing. They compete, try to outdo each other, learn from each others mistakes, etc. Debian pitches to a distinctly different user base, just like with win95/NT lines.
I must also say that I don't understand your logic. Your decision should be based on whichever OS is best. If it's windows, let it be windows, if it's debian, use it, if RH, use that. Uniqueness of said OS should not figure in your decision at all.
Let me illustrate: let's say two guys come up to you and say "you must choose one box out of our offerings." One of them has one box, and the other has 10. If you choose to take the first guy's box, your pick is easier, if you take the 2nd's box, you have to choose out of ten. However, you have no idea what's in the boxes, the second guy's 10 boxes may each be filled with 100 dollar bills, while the other guy's one box might have horse manure in it or something. But here's what you're doing: you're picking the guy with one box just because he has one. That's plain silly.
By the way, I don't claim to be very accurate in my roundup of distros. Read reviews or just pick one or two and try 'em. I don't think distro reviews like the one in the story are very useful, though - each distro is a very complex system with thousands of elements interacting, it may work great on one system with one user great but still be lousy on your system with your usage patterns.
So, try one of them or not, but don't make up silly excuses like "There is only one", it's operating systems, not Highlander epos.