FC5 Pukes on my machine

[Giles Orr]

Hi Folks.

My first post, been reading the list for about a week.  Long time
Linux user, just back in Toronto after many years away.  Very happy to
find such an active and knowledgeable mailing list, and I expect to be
at the meeting tomorrow night.  In response to Paul King:

On 5/8/06, Paul King <pking123-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> I think soon I will be moving to Debian anyway. It seems as
> though (and I hadn't noticed until now) RedHat now wants me to purchase
> "entitlements" if I want updates to the OS.  [SNIP] ... I get the feeling
> now that Fedora has now become a one-time download of an experimental
> and possibly broken set of RPMs, and if you want bug fixes and the like,
> then you have to purchase "entitlements" from RedHat.

I hope this will help shed light on both my own Linux use and Paul's
plans to switch distros.  I started using Linux in 1994, and the only
realistic choice at the time was Slack.  (Anyone remember Yggdrasil? 
They were pretty much bowing out at the time.)  I tried Redhat 4.2
when it came out, wasn't happy with it.  Then came RH 5.0, and I
switched primarily because of package management - amazing, you could
install binary packages, not source, and the system made sure there
weren't any conflicts!  Four years later, having developed a major
distaste for "RPM dependency hell" and upset at RH's partial
abandonment of the community when they switched to Fedora, I bailed
once again in the name of package management, going over to Debian.  I
told friends then, and will say it again now, Debian is a monster to
install, but once you get it running there really isn't anything
easier to maintain and upgrade.  But about 18 months ago I discovered
Ubuntu, and I highly recommend it.  It combines the power and
manageability of Debian with the user-friendliness Debian has always
so desperately needed.

A few notes about myself: I'm a CLI junky - I use aptitude's command
line to install packages, prefer fluxbox (but change WMs fairly
regularly and remain a big fan of CTWM), burn CDs with cdrecord, edit
with vim (not ed - I'm not THAT hardcore), and just generally avoid
GUI programs other than Firefox and Jpilot.  I'm also the author of
the "Bashprompt HOWTO."

--
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
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