Author: Stuart Sears Date: To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List Subject: Re: [Hampshire] Which Distro ?
Russell Gadd wrote: > I am trying to decide on a distribution to use for my home PC and
> would welcome comments on the following. [...]
Although I run etch on my mailserver (etc) I am not really qualified to
talk about ubuntu, so I won't :).
Although, actually, maybe I will... it seems from general discussion
that *buntu is more or less the defacto distro around here, so there's
always the aspect of community support to consider. It is also a
remarkably good desktop distro, as I understand it (haven't played with
it for a long time)
The debian connection seems to suit you quite well, too.
> Fedora - upside: major distro, has selinux support, presumably
> benefits from Red Hat connection - downside: haven't run this, no
> experience of packaging system, have heard a comment that it is used
> by Red Hat as a test bed for new things, so how stable is it?
Hmmm. That story again (disclaimer: I work for RH** so I am closer to
this than some, perhaps.)
Fedora, while used for testing updates and new features that eventually
roll out into RHEL (SELinux, libvirt, virt-manager, networkmanager etc)
is not really a beta. (That's the usual FUDism. I know you didn't
exactly say that). It's much more stable than that, although the sheer
pace and quantity of updates (and absolutely no commitment to a
consistent API/ABI) can be fairly overwhelming at times.
3rd party binary apps may break on kernel updates (and some other
updates as well). Many third parties don't consider the effects of
SELinux either...
You can use apt with rpm. Many people do.
I have been a fedora user since it started. I like the pace of change
and the free software commitment, but I'll freely admit that it may not
be for anyone.
[**] ...but I do not represent them or speak for them. Sorry. Has to said.
