[Ilugc] which linux brand teaches me linux better?
- From: lug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Chandrashekar Babu)
- Date: Sun Jan 23 21:20:40 2005
I started with an old redhat, moved to slackware and freebsd.
I started with Slackware (coincidentally the same time when PCQuest
released it back in '96). After about 2 years of Minix+Linux+FreeBSD on
my home computer, I tried Redhat 5.2, Mandrake Linux, Debian (potato)
and found them all much different, yet interesting to play with.
With all the latter distributions, I begin tweaking their system
configuration files by hand to optimize boot time, reduce number of
processes running, and removing unncessary cruft (mostly left by the
various "standards committee") to make my system lean, fast and more
responsive - and I end up having them look/feel/behave like a Slackware
box.
In my office, I preferred using RH 6.1 and Debian potato on servers
(pre-2001). They are best installed once, and left running - perhaps
with security updates/kernel upgrades once in a while.
I was a bit impressed with Gentoo lately, but then two reasons had me
give up on Gentoo at home - net connectivity speed, and my CPU speed
(compiling Gnome 2.6 and KDE 3.2 took close to 3 weeks of continous
operation on my machine). Gentoo is simply not recommended for the
impatient (it might take several hours/days before you get gentoo
installed with all your favourite productivity tools).
I moved back to Slackware 8.0 in 2002, and was impressed once again with
its consistency. Nothing really changed since the Slackware 2.0 days.
The installation screens, configuration files, package structure - all
remained the same. Even today, while I use Slackware 10, I feel most
comfortable for one of its greatest strengths - its simplicity.
--
Chandrashekar Babu
http://www.chandrashekar.info/
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