On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 12:18:01AM -0000, Paul wrote:
>
>
> --- In LINUX_Newbies@yahoogroups.com, "dbneeley" <dbneeley@...> wrote:
> >
> >
> > >
> > > I believe today Debian is the premier choice for any true Linux aficionado that has the experience to deal with it. I'm sure many would disagree with me, but they're all wrong :)
> > >
> > > Paul
> > >
> >
> > I believe a similar case could be made for *many* distributions.
>
> I don't.
Meh. The vast majority are probably based on Ubuntu which is based on
Debian. RedHat has the commercial server market--seems most vendors
will only really support either RH or SuSE, and Novell is having issues.
Dell will now certify Ubuntu, but won't offer support on their servers.
As for Debian being the distro of choice, I'd argue, but it's all
meaningless--what is a true Linux afficionado? Your definition will
differ from mine. For example, in Debian, if you install X, it will
then boot into X without giving you the choice. Wouldn't the Linux
afficionado resent that? (It can easily be fixed, but I'm deliberately
splitting rabbits--errm, hairs, whatever, here). It's removed an
element of freedom.
> > Slackware, for example.
>
> Nope. Been there, ran that, probably for longer than you've been using Linux. Though I did stop slacking long ago and I hear they've made some improvements. Still, if they were doing that well I think I'd have heard about it.
>
Again, meh. Not to dismiss your experience or opinion, but others would
argue that Slack is a truer Linux than Debian. Others would argue the
opposite (as you are doing). Again, depends upon definitions.
> How about even Gentoo would have been a better call. But still isn't a realistic distribution for daily use. And still comes no where near Debian.
>
Gentoo's changed a lot from what I understand, and not necessarily for
the better. My own recommendation is usually for Arch. Well
documented, small community, therefore, mutual respect between
developers and users, unlike Debian, where I see a developer closing a
bug, claiming it's not a bug, another developer re-opening it, the same
developer closing it, and it gets a little bit school yard. The loser
is the user.
Which to digress, is the type of attitude that to me is fairly
unproductive. I've seen lately, on the Fedora testing list, how it's
NVidia's fault that some new upgrade broke it. I don't quite get this,
it's like blaming the owner of a parked car, if you hit it while moving.
NVidia did nothing, Fedora, or posssibly the kernel folk, or possibly
the xorg folk, did something and suddenly, 20 percent (approximately,
based on NVidia's share in the last quarter) of Fedora users can't use
their machines. Meanwhile, Linux is perhaps one or two percent of the
market, with Fedora only having a share of that. Ah well, attitude is
everything. :)
> You've no idea.
Hrrm, again, disagree, but it's just more of the same.
>
> >
> > If you are such an aficionado, then you might contemplate doing what I have not bothered with for five or six years now--and compile your own kernel, removing all the cruft that is there for exotic machines and optimizing it for your own processor in the process. In some cases, that can greatly speed things up while reducing the memory footprint considerably. It's also a great learning experience.
> >
>
> Do you have any proof of this? You do realize that if your system does not have this exotic hardware your kernel will not load up the drivers don't you? If you do not believe me lsmod should be black and white proof. Also module systems are post build configurable. If some module your kernel is loading is really killing you you can always blacklist it from loading, delete it, whatever.
>
Hey, just because, in the old days, when it was more important to slim
down a kernel, I removed hard drive support--which made for an
interesting reboot....
All kidding aside, back in those days, I noted how Debian threw in every
module possible, and trimming down a Debian kernel was a pain.
I don't see any problem with removing cruft from the kernel, or adding
something that you need. If you don't have said exotic hardware, then,
use a default kernel.
>
> > Personally, I am not such a purist. Debian has always been popular with certain groups of people, including those who follow (and care about) the positions of Richard Stallman--whom I find something of a nut, although a frequently entertaining and occasionally quite useful one today. (Obviously, we all owe him a huge debt for having created Gnu and the many tools we use today often without much thought. However, I don't go so far as to refer to "Gnu Linux" nor have I quite departed my senses enough to embrace EMACS in all its arcane glory!)
> >
>
> Nothing I can say here will improve matters any. I think you've said more than enough yourself. May St. iGNUcius find it in his heart to forgive you!
>
Ah, perhaps this is what you mean by Linux afficionado. Well, I respect
those who only use opensource software, but of course, even what's
considered more or less core isn't all GPL. I don't hear anyone saying,
let's get rid of ssh, it's BSD licensed, and in the CentOS version, for
example. /usr/share/doc/openssh-<version>/LICENSE clearly states that it
contains no GPL code.
> > That said, I think in a very few years we will hardly recognize the operating system landscape. The OS is, essentially, slowly dying other than as a platform for online resources. Soon enough, computers seem to be marching toward a future in which they are little more than extremely smart terminals.
> >
> >
>
> Uh huh. Oh sorry did I just fall asleep there? Dreams and fantasies have that effect on me. I'm trying to be nice but I don't know, no respect!
Not trying real hard, are you? :)
One thing this list does try to avoid are Debian style flame wars. If I
want to be insulted, I can ask my wife for her opinion on $Anything_I_do
--
Scott Robbins
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