[GLLUG] Debian

[Paul Donahue]

$0.02:

RedHat is slowly (in my opinion) becoming the "shirt and tie" standard. I feel mostly because it has stock and has the wonderful thing called tech support. I was a strong believer in RedHat until my Debian loving friends finally turned me on to the wonders of "apt"

In my humblest opinion:

RedHat is a good out-of-the box distro to run. If you're gonna just do the basics or are a newbie it's pretty much good to go. If you're gonna be running a server, or trying to do some cutting edge stuff and keeping everything up-to-date is essential I would say Debian is the choice.

I am in the process of switching all of my servers over to Debian. My laptop and workstation have been on it for about 6 months now and I absolutely love it! I feel that it is closer to "raw linux" than the RedHat distro and all of it's cohorts (TurboLinux, Mandrake, etc.)

I'm glad I learned on RedHat, it taught me some of the basics, and had some pretty nice tools for doing the basic tasks. Plus it came with just about everything and more than I needed. RPM teaches you the basic package management stuff you will need to be come intimately familiar with all other distros.

I now know why they say: "RedHat for shirt and tie, Debian for hackers" or some such from whoever "they" are.

Overall there's something to be said about updating your system by the following steps:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

that's it from me. bye.

PS. on the newbie tip..... If you're (or someone u know) is just getting into linux but is a pretty good windows person, check into Lindows. They're billing it as a replacement for windows. I personally feel it's a good product for someone wanting to get into linux but find it a big first step. A good intermediate especially for someone very familiar with windows and vaguely familiar with *nix. 


Paul Donahue
Computer Scientist
Computer/Network Technician
Michigan State University
http://www.pdonahue.com/
ICQ: 1624723   Phone: 517-204-6047

>>> "Jeff Lawton" <jeff@idealso.com> 04/15/02 01:21PM >>>
I am trying to decide which Linux to choose for my desktop. Is there a
source of information that covers the pros/cons between the different
variations of Linux. I need to run Vmware workstation 3x. I appreciate all
responses and opinions.

Jeff
http://www.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user