|
Re: OT: Linus or annother Linus?
de Mark Carter 04/24/2006 08:49
Kalle Piirainen wrote:
> As I understand, these are just
> derivatives of Debian?
Yes. Debian forms the basis from which many many distributions are
derived. Slackware is another such distro. Probably Red Hat, too.
> It kinda seems to me that Debian would be the most stable, versatile,
> cumstomizable general distribution for the hobbyist, am I wrong?
Slackware also has a strong reputation for being stable, versatile and
customisable.
> And of course SuSe
I tried the free one, and it is actually quite good. What I don't like
about it is that when you want to install new software, you have to keep
swapping CDs. A bit tedious.
> and good ol' Red Hat seem to
> be most commonly supported driver-wise, at least by hardware
> manufacturers ?
Ubuntu has a reputation as being amongst the best for driver support.
The problem with Debian is that you either use their netinstall disk or
their disk-set. With the former approach, there's virtually nothing on
the disk, so it takes ages to do an installation because it downloads
the extra software from the internet. With the latter approach, there's
a honkingly large number of CDs to juggle (what is it, 12 now?). Neither
approach is particularly appealing, especially if you anticipate
performing multiple installations.
Ubuntu adopts a more sensible approach of providing most of what you
need on one CD.
Debian-derived distros also tend to mix-and-match software from
different branches (i.e. as between stable, testing, and unstable),
attempting to combine the stability of the more stable branches with the
newer features of the more unstable branches. The risk is that you
introduce incompatabilities and breakages. So, you pays your money, and
you takes your choice.
Ubuntu seems to have made many good choices (like choosing to derive
from Debian, selecting Gnome, and putting it all on one CD), suprisingly
good considering that AFAIK he is not a computer geek.