Re: why debian
On Saturday 13 November 2004 00:35, Emil Perhinschi wrote:
>
>
> I guess Debian is the best if you just want to start doing non-geekish
> stuff like reading mail, writing term papers/articles/poetry/... ,
> listening music, watching movies or writing your own apps ...
>
> If you need a distro to compile your own packages on it, to configure it
> the way you like it etc., then I guess it does not really matter which
> one you use ... as long as you login as root and start a text editor all
> Linux distributions are almost the same thing. If you want to have the
> meanest and leanest Linux installation ever seen, you can always
> install no matter what distribution and start building a Linux from
> scratch ...
I'd disagree with the above. Fedora for one thing has had it's libaries
'enhanced' to stop you compiling apps that might allow you to do stuff that
the MPAA / RIAA don't want you to do. Mandrake being more or less the most
"Windows" like distro stomps on any attempts to configure it the way you want.
Both of those distros are brilliantly easy to install, and there are plenty
of users who are happy with the default way they set up so they do have their
place.
But if you want ease of maintenance as well as configurability, Debian is
really up there IMO. Gentoo gets plenty of good press in that area too if you
can stand the initial wait. Ubuntu is great if you can cope with the steep
jump from the windows way to the Gnome way of life, but otherwise still have
all of the ease of Debian.
The price of that flexibility is a steeper learning curve of course.
I do have a box with a few 5 gig 'try it out' partitions, so I'll have to try
both Slack and Gentoo out soon.
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