[Tfug] Thinking linux

[Jim March]

On 2/5/07, christopher floess <skeptikos at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Wow, lots of help. Thanks. I kind of figured it would go this way, and am
> glad it did. Options are good. As far as the headless thing goes, when I
> did
> it in freebsd, it worked, but I ran into some probs. Some of the things
> like
> backspace, insert, etc, didn't work, they gave weird characters. It was
> over
> a null modem cable (is that the same as a crossover serial cable?). So I
> would want to connect some other way. I guess telnet, or ssh would be an
> option. I guess it would be nice to become proficient enough to have the
> linux machine act as a gateway or file server, and have the fbsd machine
> be
> something else. I'm sure you don't want one machine
> acting as a file server and router. I can't imagine that being a safe
> setup.
>
> I looked into Gentoo a little, and it seems alright. So maybe I'll go that
> way. By established distro, I mean one of the *major* ones. I know that's
> relative, but there always seem to be new ones popping up, and since I
> decided to leave windows a while back, there have been certain ones that
> seem to have been consistent: debian, slack,
> suse, mandrake, redhat, etc., with ubuntu seeming
> to be the new comer with strength, but again, it's based on debian any
> way,
> right?



Ubuntu is based on Debian, yeah: the "unstable" branch.

That's not my term, that's Debian's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(Linux_distribution)

The people behind Ubuntu took the more bleeding-edge bits in Debian Unstable
and tried to "stabilize it" while adding a far better installer.

They got the installer right, and with Dapper (ver.6.06) they got the
stability to a good degree.  With "Edgy" (v.6.10) they failed.  Bigtime, in
my opinion.

The reason there are all these Debian-based distros is that Debian has one
of the longest development cycles of any distro.  About 18 months on
average.

But: Linux in general is about to hit a "golden age" in a lot of people's
opinion, and the next full-tilt Debian Stable is about to ship.  Some of us
are thinking it'll be a hell of a good starting point and can be maintained
for at least a couple years as a desktop platform, more than that as a
server of course.

The Debian family tree is now dominated by Debian itself and Ubuntu.

The RPM family tree is dominated by Fedora Core 6 now and soon Fedora 7 (as
two branches of Fedora are going to be re-combined into just one and called
Fedora 7).  FC6 is very, very good.  F7 has a "shot at the title" to become
THE dominant Linux variant as M$ partially implodes with Vista.  The F7
installer will have to significantly improve and the auto-update process
will need to have the idiots running it kicked in the behinds some...

I think OpenSuse is out of the running, with Ubuntu's next flavor a
contender, Debian Stable 4.0 likewise and Madriva a dark horse.  Most others
are going to be "also rans".

I would suggest that sometime around May we need to revisit this subject in
more depth and as a group become part of the process of sorting out what's
going to dominate - which really means "what are we going to start loading
on the Grandma Millie machines so we don't see them nuked by the hoard of
virii when Vista is pwned by the scammers, spammers and botnet barsterds"...

Let's ask this right now: if the choice is down to Debian Stable 4.0 (the
upcoming cut) and Ubuntu Feisty (ditto), if setup takes longer with Debian
but the result is more stable, is that what y'all would rather load on
Grandma Millie's rig?  Because my answer would be "hell yes"...spending an
initial hour at the desk to load MP3 drivers and whatever beats hours of
phone calls later when it pukes....

BUT Ubuntu might learn from that last disaster and get it right...

Jim