Re: Distros are all good (was: Re: A few things who still suck inRedHat 8 aka constructive criticism)

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Am Sam, 2002-11-23 um 20.14 schrieb Joe Klemmer:

> On Sat, 2002-11-23 at 11:34, Anthony Abby wrote:
> 
> > > > I'm off shopping for Mandrake 9.0 tommorrow.
> > > 
> > > 	Good luck.  You might want to look at SuSE as well.
> > 
> > I switched to Mandrake 9 about a month ago and have been nothing but
> > happy.  It's great!
> 
> 	FWLIW, I have found that if you use any of the major distros you really
> won't go wrong.  

I'm tired of the distro wars but can't resist to comment here. :-)

I'm also tired if the "new harmony" aka "all distros are the good".
There are a lot of differences between them. You won't go wrong but
nevertheless you can make a "sub optimal" decision.

e.g. SuSE: 
they "re-configured" the KDE menue, too, implementing their SuSE menue
(not as a distro specific addition but as a replacement) and it is hard
to get rid of it. Or if you su to root, you can't start a KDE or Gnome
program anymore (e.g. kate to edit a configuration file, you have to use
vi or a special console menue, deeply hidden in the menue tree). The
menue system is quite cluttered and you need many klicks to start a
program. There are a lot inconveniences in details which sum up into a
remarkable loss of usability (as a desktop). And "United Linux" at least
in the current version is nothing else than a SuSE 8.1 with less end
user applications.

e.g. Mandrake
I don't use the current version 9 but did with versions 6-8. There are a
lot of bugs in the distro. E.g. ISDN support (relevant for european
users) - they can't get it working seamlessly for several releases. May
be because of so many bugs they disabled the bug report facility for
their users (you have not only to register as with Redhat or SuSE, but
you have to apply and qualify as a bug reporter in order to get access -
even during the beta period for beta testers). A very smart decision in
order to achive a mostly bug free distro. Their online update facility
offered a kernel update (qualified as security fix) for months (!) that
resulted in a non-bootable system. 

O.K. you won't go completely wrong, but could get a more or less
suitable distro for your working habits and requirements. Currently you
won't get "the optimal" distro either, you have to decide which of the
features hurts you less and which of the many bugs is acceptable or
doesn't matter in your environment. Someone may switch to Mandrake or
SuSE to avoid some features of RH (e.g. blue curve) but as a payoff
he/she has to accept some other "features" which he/she will not know
about yet (but might be more uncomfortable as the "features" of e.g. RH
he/she knows about). The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

And according to my findings, RH is not "the optimal" distro but the
"least hurting" one  (in terms of severe bugs and usability annoyances)

Peter



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