Linked by Anthony Hicks on Tue 8th Apr 2003 16:17 UTC
This (quite long) article has been written by me for two primary reasons: One, to hopefully save someone else the time and hassle associated with trying out various Linux distributions, and two, to promote some discussion and feedback regarding what a modern Linux distribution should be, and of course to contrast this with what is currently available. I am exploring the offerings of MS Windows, BeOS and MacOSX, and then taking on a number of well-known Linux distributions.
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Allow me to quickly cover a few points that have been made:
Yes, I didn't review a true debian distribution. Regardng the apt-get points however, you can install such a system (apt-get, that is) on a number of Linux distributions, including Redhat, and I must admit that it does make maintaining a Linux installation much easier. Why Redhat and others don't include it in addition to their RPM setups is beyond me.
Regarding the missing distributions, Xandros and Lindows both cost $$ to play with, and thus they fall into my “Suse category” in that they don’t provide a free, downloadable version to try. Additionally, I didn’t care about these as neither provides a KDE 3.1 WM, which is what the article states I was looking for.
Hardware analysis was more or less ignored as all distributions treated my hardware equally (with the exception of the X issues that were noted). None of them saw my scanner (a Visioneer) , and none setup my 7 button mouse out of the box (They all see it as a 3 button wheel mouse). Other than these two issues, one of which is easy to fix (The mouse!), I didn’t feel that hardware was an issue worthy of making the article any longer than it already was.
As for the Anonymous’s Windows comments… In brief, the virtual desktop addon you’re referring to is an add-on! If you’d have read the article, my point regarding Virtual desktops is that they should be built into the system. Your solution is just another item that should be there when I purchase my copy of Windows as far as I’m concerned.
Similarly, as for the sounds my point was that I do turn them off, but Windows “resets” them on occasion, turning back on the defaults (I honestly don’t care if you read the article, but at least read what I’m saying before taking a sentence or two out of context. Sheesh…). 8)=
I haven’t had a chance to use eComStation yet, but I continue to hear of problems with it, so I’m not in any hurry to try it out either. Eugenia’s install problems seem to back that fact.
As for Yoper being Slack based… It really is. Kinda…
Check out some sources on the web: They did resort to a LFS mentality, but they also based much of their distribution on Slackware (hence why some packages such as Dropline Gnome initially supported Yoper, but have since stopped due to Yopers diversion from the Slack mentality/file arrangements). My opinion’s largely based off both postings on the Yoper site (the original one that was deleted a couple of times), as well as discussions with other Slackware users. If it’s currently incorrect, it just goes to show how much they really have diverged with the final release, which I admittedly haven’t used. As of RC4 however, this was still more or less true, and was a noteworthy point I feel.
By the way, if you like Gnome and are using a Slack-based distro, you should check out the aforementioned http://www.dropline.net/">Dropline . It's very nice, and is a better release than Redhats version IMHO! 8)=
- Tony