Re: Newbie questions about installing and documentation
James A. Robinson writes:
>> newbie? Is the slackware version more
>> stable/user-friendly/complete/popular? There doesn't seem to be too
>> much articles concerning debian at comp.os.linux.*, how come?
>
>Slackware is certainly more popular then Debian right now. Slackware
>has been out for a long time, and is considered a very good setup. In
>our favor, most people who see Debian will comment on how much better
>our installation tools are.
...having just seen a friend struggle through upgrading his libc under
Slackware I can confirm this. It took about ten minutes; the
installation tool seems to be oriented towards disks rather than
individual packages, which is fine for an initial install but when you
want to upgrade just one thing and you're not sure which disk it's on
can be rather tedious.
It also had a habit of stating that certain packages were `required'
and reinstalling them without asking or checking existing versions
despite the fact that we knew perfectly well only one thing needed
upgrading.
Other problems on the same system: /etc/hosts.conf incorrect; ftpd
non-functional; all sorts of inappropriate files under /var; no
attempt to tidy up aging log files; and so on.
(I may be slandering Slackware here, as I have no experience of
installing or administering it other than over other people's
shoulders. But I've never had the kind of problem described above
with Debian.)
>> In the same note, is 8 MB of memory comfortable? Oh yes, I have no
>
>When I had a 486sx25 w/ 8m, it was usable in X, but not comfortable.
>One has to wait awhile for Netscape and Xterms to load up, etc. But
>if you don't use X, 8m should be fine.
I find 8Mb OK with X; add Emacs as well and it can be a little
sluggish sometimes - especially for the `do everything with Emacs'
type user - but still basically OK.
I still want more memory, tho ;-)
--
Richard Kettlewell richard@uk.geeks.org http://www.elmail.co.uk/staff/richard/
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