Re: [ProgSoc] linux type differences

[Roland Turner <raz@nospam.arrakis.com.au>]

daedalus wrote:

> Anyway, my question relates to the differences between Debian, Slackware,
> RedHat, etc. I've done some work with Debian, lots with Slackware and a
> little with RedHat and I'm wondering if there are any gotchas relating to
> file paths, etc that would affect software installs.

Unless you are planning to do seriously wierd stuff (develop software
for example :-)), file paths are almost irrelevant, as long as your
distribution has packages available for what you wish to do. On this
count, Debian wins hands down, with around 1860 packages ready to deploy
themselves to your hard upon request. The only software installed on my
notebook that isn't in Deabain packages is Gnome. Sadly, Debian's
package selection tool is, umm, ugly.

You could take the RedHat path. The distribution includes far fewer
packages, but lots of people out there are generating RPMs. Sadly,
conflicts between third party RPMs remain a possibility.

Slackware appears to be dissappearing into obscurity, at least compared
to its former greatness.

> I didn't have any dramas with Slackware, as it seemed to put everything
> in pretty standard places (/usr/local/etc/httpd, /usr/X11 etc.) but I've
> heard good things about RedHat lately.

Even Apache has finally stopped using /usr/local/etc as its default
home. This was a truly horrible choice made by the NCSA people many
years ago. "A patchy" server built initially as lots of patches on
NCSA's server, inherited this choice and, until recently, didn't correct
it.

> Any opinions, experiences people would like to share about their flavour
> of choice? Just the facts thanx, no flamewars necessary... Though I'm
> sure whinge@nospam. will be full of them in a couple of days. :)

Opinion: Openness is better than not-openness. Debain agressively
pursues openness (in fact, Debian's Free Software Guidelines are now the
yardstick by which "free" licenses are measured). RedHat's agenda is
different.

Opinion: More choice is better than less, although both offer more
choice in their own way, Debian's approach allows me to be a user when I
am installing software that I don't wish to be an expert on (shells,
window managers, web browsers, web servers, etc.) so I can focus on
developing stuff that I do want to be an expert on.

- Raz


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