Re: question

[Jamie Lawrence <jal@jal.org>]

[Note: Please wrap your mails. Thanks.]

On Mon, 12 May 2003, res0qrai wrote:

> I,m curious, does any one know the answer to this question; 
> What are the main differences between suSE, Debian, mandrake, 
> redhat, slackware? I have been to many different groups and 
> sites and no one seems to know what the main diffs are, other 
> then the name. I would think I could find a linux guru somewhere 
> who could answer the question, but most are flavor specific not 
> knowing all flavors and the diffs?

I'll throw out general thoughts on what I know about, and maybe others
can jump in.

Suse -
 RPM based packaging
 Everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach
 Popular in Europe
 x86 focused
 Seems to try to balance ease of use and corporate friendly features
 Percieved as relatively easy to install (although I'm not sure why...
    just a personal opinion)
 (Not sure what the community is like)

Debian -
 deb based packaging
 Very concerned with software freedom
 multiplatform focused
 (not sure where Debian is most popular)
 Balances software freedom, multiplatform support and stability
 Percieved as harder to install than many
 Entirely community focused

Mandrake -
 RPM based, I think
 Once was a fork of Redhat, now much more independent
 Focused on ease of use
 (I'm not very familiar with it - never used it.)

Redhat -
 RPM based
 Popular
 x86 focused
 vertically integrated approach - tries to be easy to use on the desktop
    while providing business focused services and support
 Decent community, good (for pay) support
 (Haven't used it for a long time)

NOTE: I think that's all correct, but I could be wrong in places. Also,
you could be asking about entirely different things.

You might look at http://www.distrowatch.com/ for more/better
information.

Hope this helps.

-j

-- 
Jamie Lawrence                                        jal@jal.org
Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that.