OSNews

This is posted because elver asked for feedback. Just offering my opinion, which I'm entitled to, just like all of you. I'm not trying to start distro wars. That's played out...

{opinion} I've tried more distros that I can remember. Linux was brought to my attention in '98. I started wtih RH 5.2 (talk about a learning experience). These days, I mostly use RH9 downloaded from linuxiso.org. I continue to download and test new releases from the big names (mandrake, slackware, even freeBSD ~I know it's not linux, bite me) just to see what's up. Why do I keep coming back to RH?

It runs fantastic on my athon XP 2100. It runs fine on my mini-ITX from VIA. It even runs okay on my old PII 300 Mhz Panasonic Toughbook with only 196 MB of ram.

Since discovering apt-get functionality, I have none of the dependency issues that bug people to death (pardon the pun). Freshrpms.net has elimated the lack of multi-media options.

Sure, it doesn't have the wide selection of apps debian has, but I don't need 5000 applications as a home user. Just give me a solid browser, mplayer, instant messenger, and work with my digital camera, my printer, etc. The graphical config tools work. They might not be "cohesive" or all-in-one place, but they've come so far since 5.2, it's a dream. Compare to NT 4.0 and Win2k (they had you all over the place), and forget XP, I HATE wizards for simple tasks. Only SuSe seems to beat RH at this game, but their tools sometimes don't work as advertised.

My stable RH9 system hasn't crash since installing it. I keep a test system to break on purpose from time to time, but I've grown bored with that. If I want to install an unstable system, I just download some french distro.

I've tried many other distros over the years, but usually come back to RH. SuSe is the only other distro that I can tolerate (YaST and YOU rock). In fact, if they didn't want me to pay full price each release, I'd use it all the time. Call me cheap, I'm unemployed. IT work will burn you out, especially patching Windows machines all the time.

It all boils down to what works for you. Always choose the best tool for the job (and that includes considering whether you can use the tool, not just the technically or philosophically 'superior' tool)! Don't get religious about your O/S. It will eventually die. [Like my precious System 7! ]

My friend tells me that the problems I've had with Mandrake are the same problems he has with RH. I guess our hardware is different enough to bring those issues up. I understand many newbie linux users enjoy MDK (even swear by it), but to me it doesn't seem entirely stable. I know you asked for positives of RH, not negatives on MDK. It's a combination of my experiences with all distros that drive me back to the RH. e.g. MDK 9.1 installs great, but how do you shut the system down? Do I have su to root and 'halt' the system? What did I miss during install? How 'bout a 'Shutdown' option in a menu somewhere?

This new combo of fedora and RH is a bit strange. I guess that's RH's way of dumping the home-user desktop product to focus on the big ticket item, as they should. They're turning a profit selling to enterprises. People like me just like to have kick-butt free software available to avoid M$ head-aches. Instead, I get open-source head-aches, but at least someone can help me figure out solutions without charging US$95 per incident.{/opinion}