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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?"
Speed. I am running a Gentoo system. The big advantage is that you get new packages pretty quickly. All the code can be compiled specifically for you processor (that's right I have an entire system specifically compiled for my Athon Thunderbird). Gentoo also has a bunch of kernel patches applied (most specifically the preemptible kernel patch and the O(1) scheduler kernel patch). These two do wonders for the responsiveness of a desktop system (don't worry, everyone else will get these when kernel 2.6 is adapted). The big things you lose on Gentoo is the stability and tech support. Don't get me wrong, it can be very stable, but the bigger distributions have a lot more people to check such things. The biggest thing though has to be time. You can spend a lot of time tweaking the settings and it can take a while to get a program (even with a fast internet connection and computer). As someone coming from Mandrake, you will also most miss the graphical setup programs, but you will end up learning a lot more about how the innards of Linux works.
...is Linux.
Basically, the install and management apps are the only difference as far as the software goes. I'm personally very fond of YaST, mainly because of it's excellent hardware detection, but also because of it's Online Update module, so I use SuSE.
However, the reason I buy SuSE rather than just use the ftp install is the manuals. Of all Linux books I've read, the SuSE manuals are the most useful.
Anyway, aside from the 2 things I list above, I think all the distros are pretty much the same, with the rare exceptions where they include something proprietary, like Lindows includes Crossover Office (IIRC).
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The only project that wouldn't compile out-of-the-box with GCC 2.96 (which is replaced by GCC 3.2 in RH 8.0) was mplayer, and it was because their configure script had a specific check for it (you could bypass the check with a configure option, but then mplayer's developpers wouldn't help you at all with the app). I compiled it (and used it) successfully with various releases of GCC 2.96.
The thing with RPMs is that you can get either the binary package, or the source package. Personnally, I prefer to get the source package, so that I can play with the different compile-time options rather than being stuck with what the packager chose, but that's just me. A lot of people using RH will just download the binary updates for their systems (either automatically or manually) and be done with it.
As for your comments on the kernel (first that RH offers a heavily patched kernel, then Gentoo doing the same thing): installing a vanilla kernel.org kernel is quite easy on RH. Since it's a package that I recompile more often than others, I prefer to not package each of my compilations, and rather just install it the "old" way. It keeps all its stuff together, so it's really easy to track by hand, and the packaging is not important in that case.