Re: Debian, Slackware, RedHat and OSS (fwd)
On Tue, Jun 08, 1999 at 10:37:51PM -0000, Pollywog wrote:
>
> On 08-Jun-99 gla2@avatar.dorm.duke.edu wrote:
> > When I finally tried RedHat a couple of years later I was disgusted
> > because it wanted me to do configuration using their 'tools' vs. just
> > editing /etc/* --- I found that I could tweak it a lot less before the
> > whole thing broke and I finally reinstalled Slack.
>
> This is one thing I disliked about Caldera OpenLinux; I had to use their
> 'tools' to change simple things like a hostname.
I sorta doubt that. Underneath it's all linux. You never _have_ to use
"their tools." It's just a matter of finding where the distribution in
question puts the configuration files and then vi is your friend.
My experience with other distributions is limited in recent years,
but a few days ago my boss brought me a laptop with the latest and
greatest Caldera installed (via lizard, cute) but no PCMCIA. Well I
chased through the wonderful GUI admin tool for half an hour trying to
do it "their way."
Eventually I used find against the CD and rpm -i to get the necessary
packages installed. To their credit the PCMCIA packages matched the
installed kernel so it was fairly trivial.
Then I had to use find and grep to locate the PCMCIA network
configuration to fix that up.
Sounds like a lot of trouble for a distribution designed for the naive
user, and it is, but no more mucking about than one does with any
unfamiliar distribution. And it makes my point that, underneath all the
glitz, it really is "just" linux.
Cheers,
Pann
--
What's All the Buzz About Linux? L I N U X .~.
The Choice /V\
http://www.ourmanpann.com/linux/ of a GNU /( )\
Generation ^^-^^
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