planning to go back into Linux, what distro do you recommend?

[Fernando Duran]

--- Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>
wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 08, 2005 at 09:05:22AM -0500, Fernando
> Duran wrote:
> > Many Linux enthusiasts would recommend their
> favorite
> > distro. Just to confuse you a little more I think
> it
> > doesn't matter that much which one you choose.
> > 
> > Philosophies and commercial vs non-commercial
> issues
> > apart, for the user the difference among distros
> > basically comes down to distro-specific
> configuration
> > utility tools ("control panels") and the desktop
> > (mainly Gnome vs KDE). There are other differences
> > like package management and deeper things like
> > initialization scripts style (there are two),
> where
> > things are in the config directory /etc and kernel
> > options/patches that doesn't matter that much for
> a
> > new user. (did I forget anything?)
> 
> How many bugs they come with, how well they resond
> to security issues,
> how good the comunity support is, etc.  All the
> things that really
> matter.

- actually I forgot one big thing: the default
software packages that they come with. If the user has
broadband then it's not that important.

- how many bugs they come with: and how do we know
that? I don't think new users care about bugs they
don't suffer, and they are not going to make a distro
reliability comparison study.

- security: again, how do we know which distros are
more secure? with some configuration and care all can
be hardened in a similar way. Jeff Vaughn mentioned
last night that Ubuntu came ahead in a security study
or something and I wouldn't be surprised that's mostly
because it doesn't open any server ports by default at
installation. The "msec" security tool of Mandriva is
very nice by the way.

- community support: one of the things I mention below

> > That said, there are things that can help you
> decide
> > which distros to try:
> > 
> > - the "philosopy" or being commercial
> > - that the distro is a "mainstream" one, meaning
> it
> > has a strong community, support and good
> > documentation. You pretty much said it: Red Hat /
> > Fedora, SUSE (or whatever the spelling is this
> week),
> > Mandriva and (K)Ubuntu. (now wait for the "what
> about
> > [some distro]" flames)
> 
> I believe most surveys of linux users seem to list
> Debian in the top 2
> or 3 along with some version of redhat.

I'm going to burn in Debian hell but Ubuntu = debian
for newbies (and more)

> 
> > - If you like/dislike Gnome over KDE
> 
> Many distributions include both.  Why pick when you
> can have both.
> 

you can try both like I said but you're going to like
one over the other and it doesn't make much sense to
be switching all the time. Every new release of
Gnome|KDE it seems that Gnome|KDE is ahead in features
etc. Besides some distributions that include both
really are meant to be used (or have greater support)
with one of them, like Red Hat and Gnome.

Fernando


	

	
		
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