Red Hat 8.0

[sicarius]

For anyone that uses Red Hat I would highly recommend upgrading to 8.0. Big improvements in not only their hacked up Gnome, but also in installation. I found installing was even more smooth in 8.0 than in 7.X. For one thing It actually setup my wheel mouse correctly. The only thing I am not all that pleased about is that Nvidia hasn't release a RH8.0 rpm for their drivers which means you have to build them from source. This isn't that big of a deal, but rpm is just easier for the light hearted. Actually there is another thing I don't like. All of my GTK 1.2 themes no longer work. I guess they aren't upward compatible with GTK 2.0... Anyone that knows of a conversion tool or a way to get them to work in RH8.0 let me know.

[GnuVince]

For anyone who uses Red Hat, I would highly recommend upgrading to Debian. :D

[iDxMan]

I'd recommend FreeBSD, but I doubt its near as "friendly".

-r

[bwkaz]

And I'd recommend LFS.

*shrug*

:P

[sicarius]

yeah yeah. I have an LFS system in the works. I use red hat for convienience. And as far as debian goes I love the package system, but I would rather not have to upgrade everything after installing just to get software with newer features.

[jamessan]

Don't you have to upgrade any system after you install? Unless you're installing a distro days after it was released you will probably have older software.

[Bradmont]

You can always install Debian straight from Sid.

:)

[sicarius]

Yeah. You do have to upgrade most systems eventually. But my point was that debian is a system designed for stability first(not a bad thing) so some of their packages are a few minor reves(or even major revs) behind ones you might find in Red Hat, Slackware, etc. Even if you use apt to get the latest versions available from a Debian archive, you still are subject to what they put in their. Of course you can go and upgrade all of your packages manually...but then what advantage does Debian give you at that point?

[Strike]

Originally posted by sicarius
Yeah. You do have to upgrade most systems eventually. But my point was that debian is a system designed for stability first(not a bad thing) so some of their packages are a few minor reves(or even major revs) behind ones you might find in Red Hat, Slackware, etc. Even if you use apt to get the latest versions available from a Debian archive, you still are subject to what they put in their. Of course you can go and upgrade all of your packages manually...but then what advantage does Debian give you at that point?
sid (the "unstable" branch of Debian) is pretty much as up to date as any other distribution, and still more stable. And you have all the advantages that Debian affords you, which are too many to list :P :)

[sicarius]

right. except for ease of installation. most people want to spend time using their system rather then recompiling kernels right after installation. Hardware detection is also something that debian certainly lacks when compared to some other distros.

[iDxMan]

Last time I installed Debian I didn't feel it was any bit difficult. [then again I'm used to slack, gentoo, freebsd, aix and so on] I don't think post-install config/recompile is a bad point. Basically they're going to include a (or several?) chunky kernel that you should trim down anyway.

-r

[inkedmn]

debian's installer is not "hard to use" per se, it's just not as easy as some others :)

[jamessan]

If I remember right, they released an alpha of their new (read more friendly) installer for people to test. Right now it's only available for testing on ix86, but as far as some people are concerned it's a huge step in the right direction for Debian. Personally, I like their installer. I find it straight forward and easy to use.

[Bradmont]

Originally posted by sicarius
right. except for ease of installation. most people want to spend time using their system rather then recompiling kernels right after installation. Hardware detection is also something that debian certainly lacks when compared to some other distros. Actually, the newer Debian packaged kernels are quite nice. They have practically everything as modules, including all filesystem support, since they use initrd booting, and there are different packages optimised for different processors. They're really very easy to install, too. :)

[sicarius]

Yeah. I read that piece about the new Debian installer too. Sounds promising for deb heads and non alike.
We might as well stop this bickering anyway. It just goes in circles. I have no problem with debian. I used it for a while, wasn't as impressed as most people thought I should have been, and went back to a more convenience driven distro at the cost of some stability (still a minor loss compared to my windows box). My final point on the matter (and this is not a RH is better than X point) is that the Linux community always says they want to convert windows lusers to linux users. You simply can't reach 90% of those people with Debian in its current state. Red Hat exists to fill that niche (a long with licoris, lindows, mandrake, etc) and fills it well. In fact I believe it is the only Linux distro that has actually made a profit. Ask a non-linux user what Debian is and they probably won't know. Ask that same user what Red Hat is, they will more than likely give you an answer. Anyway, that is my last post on this thread (probably) :)

[jamessan]

I'm not bickering about anything. I completely agree that for the average user a distro like Mandrake or Lindows is the best bet to get them to 'make the switch'. Although, once they get used to Linux, I always think it's best to experiment with different distros to find one that you really like. For me, no distro has been exactly what I want. If Debian implemented the security levels that Mandrake has in their install (which I think they implemented pretty well), I think that would be my favorite, but still wouldn't meet everything that I want. So, I settle with Debian because it's the one that I like the most.