Very Computer

   I don't mean to start up a religious war, but I'm about to install
linux and I can't figure out which package to use.  I know it is largely a
matter of preference, but I'd appreciate it if people could illuminate the
pros and cons of each one.  I have the Linux Journal article on them, but
that is not really comparative.  Any help would be most appreciated.

/---------------------------+-------------------------------------------\
|  Steve Rowe      aka      |  There exists no dream worth chasing      |
| (         / |\/|          |     if it cannot satisfy                  |
| )tingray /  |  |addog     |  There exists no god worth serving        |
|                           |     if he cannot hear your cry            |
|                           |                                           |

\---------------------------+-------------------------------------------/
Home Page - http://www.whitman.edu/~rowesc

Debian - the best IMHO :)  It has excellent support on its mailing lists,
a public bug reporting system, and is the only distribution which can be
upgraded in place over the 'net.  Debian has nearly twice as many packages
as Red Hat.  It is probably the hardest to install of the three, but Linux
is so easy to install that this is not much of a factor.  Debian 1.2 is
in final preparation for a new release in the next few weeks.

Red Hat - Very Good.  Since Red Hat is commercial they sacrifice some
things (like convenience of upgrading (they require you to reboot onto
a bootdisk which is hard to do if you only have telnet access to a
machine)) but get to market with the spiffiest install around.

Slackware - Not very good anymore.  Once one of the best distributions,
Slackware has slacked off and this reviewer no longer recommends it.

--
Christopher J. Fearnley            |    Nothin But Net System Engineering

http://www.netaxs.com/~cjf         |    (Philadelphia Area Computer Society)
ftp://ftp.netaxs.com/people/cjf    |    Design Science Revolutionary
"Dare to be Naive" -- Bucky Fuller |    Explorer in Universe

Quote:>Red Hat - Very Good.  Since Red Hat is commercial they sacrifice some
>things (like convenience of upgrading (they require you to reboot onto
>a bootdisk which is hard to do if you only have telnet access to a
>machine)) but get to market with the spiffiest install around.

Erik

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|       I told you I'm not very bright -- Sugar in "Some Like It Hot"         |
|      "RPM is the greatest thing since swap-space" - Bryan C. Andregg
|                                                                             |

Since I don't have physical access to the machine, I had to learn how
to do it the "unsupported" way.  Actually it wasn't much worse than
a Debian upgrade.  The main shortcoming was a feeling that I may have
omitted something.

--
Christopher J. Fearnley            |    Nothin But Net System Engineering

http://www.netaxs.com/~cjf         |    (Philadelphia Area Computer Society)
ftp://ftp.netaxs.com/people/cjf    |    Design Science Revolutionary
"Dare to be Naive" -- Bucky Fuller |    Explorer in Universe