[olug] Re: Which Distribution

[dbw]

For Chris M Miller (cmmiller73 at juno.com):

Chris you definitely should consider no other distribution to start out
with other than Redhat Linux.  Redhat is the largest commercial linux
distribution offering more support options than any of the other
distributions.  Now this may be a point that many will wish to challenge,
but I believe that it can be easily backed up by basically looking to see
what companies, like IBM, are investing in and supporting.

However, I will never profess to claim that Redhat is the perfect fit for
everyone.  Each distribution has its own merits.  The Linux distribution
debate will always exist because the sweetest thing about linux is, of
course, that it's open source, and there will always be plenty of flavors
to choose from; kinda like Baskin Robbins ice-cream.

I was personally very disappointed in Mandrake, to me it was simply a
hacked up remake of Redhat.  I ran Mandrake at home for a while but I
found that their web site had next to nothing for information and their
distribution was not as current as far as what was packaged with it.  

The kernel that the latest release of Mandrake came with would not
recognize my 60-gig ide drive.  There is a way around this that works for
kernels as old as 2.0 kernels but this is not a solution for someone just
starting out, as you suggested that you are.

By the way, keep in mind that linux does not care about what your
computer's bios thinks that your harddrive geometry and size is.  Linux
knows :o)  

Personal considerations and bias aside, Redhat clearly has more money
being invested into it, a complete web site offering help documents,
updates, and security patches, and many toys and stuff packaged with
it; if you really want to play around with all of those cute little
frills.

Now, as far as my own personal opinion would go, I am partial to slackware
and some of that goes to the fact that it is the first distribution that I
ever used.  I also use Redhat quite a lot; it does very well in commercial
environments although I would not be afraid to use slackware on any of my
enterprise web servers at work.

There are some shortcomings with Redhat. My biggest concern with the
distribution is that of security.  Redhat tends to enable practically
every service by default after installation.  This can be easily taken
care of after the first boot by editing the file inetd.conf and entering
the directory /etc/rc.d/rc3.d to change some "S"'s to "K"'s, if you will.  

I must admit however that security is an overall concern to me with any
linux distribution.  If you never want to get compromised then your best
gamble is OpenBSD.  I myself prefer to run linux and I believe that with
some effort, keeping up with patches and bug fixes, linux can be made
reasonably secure.  I replaced a Cisco PIX firewall for a company (they
were leasing) that had a complete screened subnet network architecture
with a linux box using ipchains, ipportfw masq support, and ipmasqadm.

As a newbie or an experienced linux user I would stay clear of debian or
other distributions that simply do not have enough popularity among the
mainstream commercial users.  These distributions are loved by hard-core
linux zealots and also have their merits.  Beyond sitting in the basement
and hacking at the operating system all day, I do not think that debian
will ever be adopted for use in most commercial applications and it
certainly is not a good choice for the novice linux newbie.  I am sure
that someone will argue that they are using debian at work, but that only
qualifies as an exception to available statistics on the commercial
application of linux.  

You will always find a lot of Redhat bashing among the
linux-geek-community because it is the most commercial and thus tends not
to appeal to their particular application of linux.  I agree with them in
that I never want to see a linux distribution become so commercialized
that it ends up being another Micro$oft style "protect the user from
themselves" operating system.  At this time I still feel confident in that
Redhat is not anywhere near it.

I know next to nothing about SuSE other than it makes me think of "Green
Eggs and Ham".  I wouldn't mind playing around with it someday but so far
I haven't had the time.

In summary, Redhat is a good choice for the newbie wanting to learn linux
and enjoy an easy install.  Redhat is also a good choice for use in
commercial / enterprise environments because it has wide acceptance in the
industry with companies like IBM and Dell, while offering the most
complete support available with any distribution.  Linux is linux however,
and any distribution will offer you the full linux experience.

My recommendation, start with Redhat version 6.2.

-Derek

 
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