What are the Real Differences Between Distributions?

toblak asks: "Everybody seems to say the Mandrake is a good distro for newbies and Gentoo, Debian, SUSE, etc, are for the Power Users. Other than different updating schemes, when you get 'under the hood' of the distribution isn't it basically the same? If I compile some source code on a Debian system don't I get the same functionality as I would if I compiled the same code on a Mandrake system? I've been using Mandrake for about a year and while I don't consider myself a newbie, I'm not a Power User either. Have I been 'missing out' on something by staying with Mandrake?"

Comments

Re:Here's what I've seen

[ctr2sprt]

Red Hat likes everything nicely tucked away in /usr/bin, and /etc, completly forgeting /opt and /usr/local/bin, and /usr/local/etc ever existed. It kinda breaks some traditional locations of files.

No, RedHat is exactly correct in not installing binaries into /usr/local, and it's probably correct in not installing binaries into /opt. /usr/local is exclusively for the benefit of the administrator, the distribution must never touch it at all. In other words: /usr is for programs you install via your package manager, /usr/local is for programs you install by hand (make install). This is all very sensible and according to the FHS.

Don't forget /etc and runlevels

[SpaFF]

Another big difference between distros is how their runlevels and their /etc structure is laid out in general.

Redhat, Debian, Mandrake, et. al. use a more SYSTEM V init structure whereas Slackware uses a more BSD style init. Gentoo's init is pretty much unique to gentoo (I'm still figuring that one out).

-Lee