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How Should One Review a Distribution?
Chilliwilli asks: "Why are are good distro reviews so few and far between? Every review I've read recently seems to follow this unoriginal pattern. Big cheers about a nice easy graphical install followed by one or two driver problems blamed on hardware manufacturers. Then the rest of the review seems to be everything worked out of the box. Menus contained usual items. Software versions are X, Y and Z. See OSNews for many examples of such reviews. From the reviews I've currently read all distros seem pretty much the same, is there a reliable source for interesting, impartial and full reviews? Are there any guidelines for distro comparisons? What should people really be looking at when reviewing a distribution? I guess the broader question is what sets distros apart?"
They should be looking for the lack of a graphical installer, and a clear set of instructions on how to install the system without one.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Some people have said the best way to "review" a distribution is to make grandiose claims that Gentoo rules all, followed by some mumbling about "emerge sync" or such.
nerd politics.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Why are are good distro reviews so few and far between?
Summary of review: xyz distro is the best.
Let the flame wars begin.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Availability: Do the mirrors work? FTP, HTTP, ISO, etc...
Install: I recently needed to install linux on a 128 meg drive. Why is it that none of the smaller(size-wise) provide a good install and why do the larger distributions like RedHat require at least 400 megs. I decided to screw all distributions and install everything by hand.
Hardware setups: I love distributions that do it all for me. Just like Windows(I use Mac:-P
Grandmother appeal: Would my Grandmother be able to understand everything? This means less geek talk and more pretty eye-candy that grandma can click on.
Name: Come on... a name is important. I know several people who use Slackware just because it has the name "slack" in it.
logo: That green Gecko is cool, the linux penguin is cool, the BSD daemon is cool, the Debian ?!? WHAT THE HELL DO I DO FOR A SHIRT:-)
standards: RPM, filesystem, standard desktop environments etc... As Linux is pushing more towards interoperability between distributions... Being a rebel amongst the rebels is no longer cool.
Anyways, this is my own personal list... I am sure that everyone else will beat it to death.
...downloading and properly installing spyware....
Is there a proper way to install spyware? Please, tell me, I'd like to know.
We are the music makers. We are the dreamers of the dreams.
Slackware: We tarballed top rated stuff on freshmeat.
Gentoo: We tarballed the internet
Mandrake: We merged hanna barbara and linux.
SUSE: We are not American,, oh, wait..shiza!
Red Hat: If you have to ask, you can't afford it peasant!
Debian: Linus died for your sins you insensitive clod!
Fedora: HAHA this idiot threw away a perfectly good sandwich, want a bite?
This isn't a troll, I just don't think there is as much seperating these distro's as the zealots would like you to beleive. We are almost never encouraged to change from technical merrit. (It's got apt/yast/emerge is not good enough.)
I am for 1 distro, either Fedora or Debian (free as in everything)Great package management, multi-arch support, etc.
And two enterprise distro's Red Hat/SUSE throw everything else away and lets work together.
Why use slackware, its cool name and geek status? stupid...
Why use gentoo, you get 0.03 faster mozilla start time? Not worth losing half of developers who could be helping fedora/debian
Why use Mandrake? Perhaps I shouldn't comment on this, my opinion of it is not very high.
I care and I _still_ don't know the basic differences between Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, SuSe, Mandrake, Slackware, et cetera.
Debians the squiggly line, Fedora's the hat, Gentoo's the weird looking bird, SuSe is the lizard, Mandrake is the star, Slackware is the uhh...series of letters that spell out Slackware.
Understand now?
So what does that make LFS?
"If you're cro-magnum man and want to put together your own Linux distribution for help in herding dinosaurs, calculating rock throw trajectories and increasing your rate of evolution by 5000%, LFS is for you. Keeping in mind of course that getting it wrong will probably mean extinction for your entire species."
Hmmm, I like...
Janie took my gun...
Reminds me of the time my dad asked me about Linux.
"Do you use the one with the hat, or the one with the lizard?"
"The lizard one, dad. It's called SuSE."
nerd politics.
To minimize nerd politics, go with BSD. In general there isn't as much zealotry going on in BSD movement.
Plus it's a solid operating system that provides you with over 10,000 ports that just work. 'make install clean' and *BANG* your done.
not to mention that the grandparent post also spoke of duel booting instead of DUAL booting...
choose your weapon...
Free Online Dark Fantasy RPG - http://www.blackmud.com
Erm, Dear, did you just call me an "average idiot user" on Slashdot?
No sex tonight-
Mrs. fucksl4shd0t
Lost the URL, anyone know of it? It also had good and reasoned discussions of Emacs contra vi...
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
NO!!! Get an Amiga ! They're coming back!!
All you need to do is you just pick a distro at random and become religiously attached to it.
That way you can work out the differences easily by only installing a single distro. If you use distro x, and seek to compare it with distro y using criterion F where F C then you only need to consider two different situations:
if F(x) > F(y) then F is valid therefore x > y for all C.
if F(y) > F(x) then F is an issue only for hopeless n00bs. This implies that n00bs(y) > n00bs(x) therefore x > y for all C
As an example: I have hardly ever used SuSe, yet I use gentoo therefore I can tell you the following:
Since SuSe has worse package management than gentoo, package management can be used to measure the entire worth of a distribution. Therefore gentoo is better than SuSe.
Since Suse has a better installer than gentoo, I know for a fact that since I was able to survive without it that this must be a function only useful for n00bs, posers and grandmas. Since I don't respect the judgment of these people, I can safely assume that not only is this installer supremacy irrelevant, it also proves that the users of SuSe are halfwits and therefore have also made a bad judgment about their distribution choice, ergo gentoo is better than SuSe.
This principle can be modified slightly for use in politics, car brands, football teams, religions, ethnic groups and even music. It is a great technique for the times when one needs to know a lot without having to learn a lot. 9/10 distro choices are based on this method, why shouldn't your next one be to!
P.s. despite my jokes made about the mentality of gentoo users, it really is cool provided you know what you are doing. If you feel like a challenge then give it a try!
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Unless you switch distros every week you'll spend less than 1% of your time in the installer,
Not if you use Gentoo =P