Hi all, I'm in the fun position of trying to figure out how I want to upgrade my main home system. It's a heavily patched and hacked together RedHat 7.2 system. I've not got a new pair of 120gb drives for /home and /usr/local (will be mirrored) and I'm ready to upgrade... but to what? As a professional SysAdmin, I'm not afraid of doing stuff by hand and hacking of stuff. As a dad of a 14 month old, I don't have time! *grin* So I'm hoping to start up a fruitful discussion here to see what other people have done in this type of situation. RedHat 9 isn't that attractive, mostly because I've been using RedHat since 5.2 and I want to change and try to stay away from GNOME since it's a slow pig resource wise. I also want to get updated in terms of GTK so I can run newer GNOME apps, like Gramps 0.9.4. I've been playing with Debian 3.0 (stable -> unstable -> testing (for XFree86 4.3)) on a laptop, and while I like apt, and how well it does for getting packages and setting them up, it's not perfect either. Part of that might just be getting used to how it works, and of course used to how apt works. Finding packages can be a pain at times... and I'm annoyed it installs a 2.2.x kernel by default. They're slipping behind the times I feel. I've also played with Gentoo about six months or so ago. Nice idea, I like the idea of emerge sync (apt-get update for debian folks) but it was also a bit crufty, though not horribly so. Maybe it's better now. I think I used 1.4rc1 or something like that. My main issue is that I want good support for my Matrox G450, USB doohickys (256mb SanDisk memory stick, CompactFlash card reader, etc), sound card (I have CS3236 builtin ISA sound, or ALS4000 PCI), and good LVM/DM support. Oh yeah, the latest libraries so I can run the latest packages like Gnumeric, OpenOffice (1.1 is nice!), etc. My RH 7.2 base is getting way too old. I'm happy to also compile and test kernels on here from time to time as well, just to try and contribute to the kernel developement with trouble reports and some hacking to keep old cards going. So, what do you all think is the next best distro to go with now? John

Charles> Well, Red Hat 9 meets all your requirements above, except the Charles> one that says you don't want Red Hat :) You didn't give any Charles> good reason why you wanted to stay away from Red Hat other Charles> than you "want to change try to stay away from GNOME". Well, Charles> Red Hat 9 has KDE too, and you can always get WindowMaker, Charles> Blackbox, Fluxbox, XFCE, or something else if you want a Charles> ligher weight GUI. http://freshrpms.net/ is a good place to Charles> find such addons. Well, part of it has been that I've been using it for so long, it seems like I should try something new and see how that goes. Another issue is that I haven't been wild about some of the system configuration tools they provide, but it's not a big deal. I dunno, it's more of an urge to do something else, not a true desire to move off. Also, I have noticed that alot of packages are still staying with 7.3 or 8, and that 9 hasn't seemed to be as popular. Hard to tell... Charles> The Red Hat Linux distro that we all know an love <g> is Charles> turning into the Fedora Core community supported and Charles> developed distro. Its direction, shape, package selection, Charles> etc. will be very much driven by what the community wants. Charles> In this way, it will be more like the Debian Project, which I Charles> believe will alleviate some of the reservations people may Charles> have had about using Red Hat in the past. E.g. WindowMaker Charles> and those other GUIs will be able to come back into the Charles> distro if the community desires it. Charles> Fedora Core will also support apt-get, yum, and up2date with Charles> third party repositories of software. This will include Charles> Fedora Core itself, updates, Fedora Extras, Fedora Charles> Alternatives, and Fedora Legacy (for those who want an older, Charles> more stable distro to be supported for a longer time). See Charles> http://fedora.redhat.com/ for more info about the project. But none of this exists right now, and I want to rebuild my system this weekend if I can. :] Of course, nothing says I can't play with this stuff later one. Also, some of the rpmbuild and rpm commands have really ticked me off, since I consider the syntax and errors messages to be really baroque and unhelpful. Especially when trying to build a SRPM package, and it dies for no frigging obvious reason. And since I'm planning a fresh install, I've got the Debian and RH9 disks to play with. So maybe I'll just go with Debian for now and see how it goes long term. Thanks for the input. John

Josh> Anything in particular? Just curious. I suspect I'm one of Josh> those people who is really used to how APT works, so I like it a Josh> lot. I like apt too so far, but searching for packages seems to have been a bit painful. That is until I learned about the -a flag to apt-show-versions, but since I haven't read my about the apt-get philosophy, I've probably just missed something. Josh> Are you not aware of the apt-cache command? Nope, nor have I used it. Josh> Use the bf2.4 installer -- it will install a 2.4 kernel by Josh> default. Hmmm... any examples? Is this part of the 3.0 CDROM image? Josh> Well, I would recommend using Debian/unstable (unless testing Josh> has new enough packages for you), if you want to play with the Josh> newest software. I may be biased, however, :) I'm leaning towards debian unstable, if only because apt-get has been useful and simple once I've learned more about it. John

Slackware is my distro of choice. I am a sysadmin recently turn developer and find Slackware to be a very complete package. Some note able points are that its tgz packages are quite simple. There is no dependency checking built into them which is good for me because I like to build some things and rpm/tgz others and I am not stuck with only using the package manager to install software when I need an update. Slackware also comes with a tool to convert rpms to tgz so you can grab your fav rpms and install them on your Slackware box as tgz's. In production env's I have always exported /usr/local and managed pages with stow. Being a sysadmin the 1st place I go to on any distro is the etc dir. Slackware uses old style bsd rc scripts for startup which are all well documented and easy to read. You can also use the more recent sys V init.d if you chose. Network config is also done through the rc.d init scripts and they are all well documented with examples and comments. I find this much cleaner then the nasty poorly documented /etc/sysconfig/* mess you see with RedHat that requires the use of a set of broken Python scripts to manage it. They also use a nice rc script to manage module loading as well so you will never get screwed when modutils changes its format or reads a new config file which it has done at every major Linux release i.e. 2.2, 2.4 and now 2.6. The installer is dated compared to the likes of many graphical installs but it does the job just fine. It is not nearly as painful as the Debian installer. But no where near as good as RH. The latest version of Slackware 9.1 which I recently installed on my laptop has all the features and support you see in every other major distro with a few extras. 9.1 comes with the 2.4.22, jdk(I am a Java guy), 2.6 kernel ready(this means updated modutils etc..), GNOME 2.4, (not your favorite desktop but it has become much more responsive and less memory intensive with this release), XFce, WindowMaker, etc... You can chose resier or ext2/3 at install and supports xfs and jfs. Latest GTK. No need to update ssh yet! as it ships w/ the latest. So thats my Slackware advertisement. To be fair there are advantages and disadvantage to any distro and if you are out to try something new give Slackware a try. Matt

Thanks for your comments Matt, you make alot of good points, though I must admit that having a package management system without dependencies isn't an ideal state of affairs. Of course, having dependencies which you can't override is also not a good thing either. :]

I may get jeers for promoting BSD on a Linux list but if you want good package management with dependency checks the only way to go these days is *BSD ports tree. My forward facing boxen all run OpenBSD. When I need an update I simply run cvs upd; make; make install. Granted these ports trees are limited in size and you may have trouble getting Gramps to compile but it works. If you have a box ripe for a packet filter or file server you may want to give one the *BSD's a try.

I originally came from a BSD style init background, which I liked quite alot, then moved to the SYSV style of /etc/rc#.d/... which I hated at first. But after thinking it through, it's a much much better way to do things. It lets you manage application and daemon startup in a clean and consistent manner, without having to watch out for other packages nearly as much.

I agree that the old way is just that old! I clearly see the utility in using the sysV init its much more flexible, but if you are just running a desktop and starting a small number of services the old way is just fine. Further more Slackware provides support for the new way as well.

I also remember getting a copy of Slackware way back in 93 or so, but since I had an Amiga back then, I was never able to play with it and test it out. I probably missed the boat back then. *grin*

Amiga sweet! I always wanted an Amiga, I had a C64 and C128.

Thanks to all who have contributed, it's been a good discussion.

John

When you do make your decition tell us what you chose and why ? It would be interesting to read. Of course I hope you chose Slackware!

_______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

Le Fri, 3 Oct 2003 09:43:09 -0400, « "John Stoffel" <stoffel@lucent.com> » a écrit: JS> RedHat 9 isn't that attractive, mostly because I've been using JS> RedHat since 5.2 and I want to change and try to stay away from JS> GNOME since it's a slow pig resource wise. I also want to get JS> updated in terms of GTK so I can run newer GNOME apps, like Gramps JS> 0.9.4. I've been using RH9 on my laptop (Gateway 9100 Solo, pII/266) for some time now. I use Window Maker as my window manager, so that I have the advantage(s) of Gnome libraries (if there are any) and the speed of a descent manager.... Gnome will run on this beastie, but it's a bit sluggish. 8( Personally, I don't see much of a reason to avoid RH9. if resources are an issue, just make sure you use a WM with a small footprint (like Window Maker or others like it), or even avoid X altogether if you really feel the need to run your toes through the sand. <shrug> I've discovered yum for package management, but i am only now beginning to play with it. it sounds like a better way to deal with packages than up2date (for RH systems). i know next to nothing about apt, even though I understand that it has been "ported" for use on RH. Best regards, -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- William Smith wsmith-at-chezsmith-dot-com Fall River, MA http://www.chezsmith.com "L'homme c'est rien -- l'oeuvre c'est tout." -- Gustave Flaubert * TAG! v3.1 *