[ale] Linux Distribution Recommendations

James W. Lynch jwl at atlanta.cray.com
Tue Apr 23 08:03:29 EDT 1996


---------  Received message begins Here  ---------

> From ale-owner at cc.gatech.edu Mon Apr 22 19:18 EDT 1996
> Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1996 17:31:38 -0600
> From: Jay Lovell <Jay.Lovell at bridge.bst.bls.com>
> Subject: [ale] Linux Distribution Recommendations
> To: Ale <ale at cc.gatech.edu>
> X-Display-Position: 0
> 
> Of the various and sundry Linux distributions out on the market now, can
> anyone make a recommendation as to a particular distribution to choose or
> avoid?  Long term goals are to have a UNIX workstation at home running one of
> the flavors of Motif available for Linux (so that is also a consideration).   
> I currently have the InfoMagic Slackware distribution running on an I386DX-25
> with 8MB of RAM and a 200MB HD, but that will be being upgraded shortly to at
> least a 486-33 board.  Slackware seems to be OK as far as installing it goes,
> but upgrading seems to be a problem.  I understand you have to remove a
> package before you can replace it with a newer version and that could mean
> that config files could "disappear" before you realize you should have backed
> something up.  Red Hat appears to solve that problem, but I've read some
> complaints regarding their setup and install utility.
> 
> In any event, I'm interested in the opinions of those who've already trod this
> path so that I can avoid the 'muffins' <grin>
> 
I personally lean towards the debian release.  Upgrading is simple,
installation is pretty easy and there is a very active mailing list
for support.  The only drawback is the lack of a CDROM distribution right
now.  They are just releasing the beta of the elf distribution and when
it goes into release state, I think there will be CDs available.
If you gotta have one today and you don't have ftp access, debian isn't
for you.  But if you can wait a while, it's a good option.  I've got
it on two machines and it is easy to maintain. Stay away from the
debian 1.1 release on the InfoMagic CD.  They (InfoMagic) picked up
an unstable release without asking us what it was.  We've been in touch
so that won't happen again.

Jim.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Lynch, Sales Analyst,  Cray Research, Inc. / ARS: K4GVO
Southeast District, Phone: (770) 631-2254, Email: jwl at cray.com
Suite 270, 200 Westpark Drive, Peachtree City, GA 30269






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