21/08/01 11:00:56, Adam Bower abower@thebowery.co.uk wrote:
On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, D.I. Redhouse wrote:
Didn't it go through a period of being quite badly behind most of the other distributions?
More like other distros try and race each other into having the most unstable software with the biggest version number in! One of the
That's one reason I'm still with SuSE after all this time. They haven't messed me about at all, and if beta software is in the distro, they ensure one is aware of it. IMO, for a newbie, SuSE can't be beaten. Every time I've been near RH, OTOH...
Cheers, Laurie. --- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com PGP key at http://pgpkeys.mit.edu:11371 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Laurie Brown wrote:
That's one reason I'm still with SuSE after all this time. They haven't messed me about at all, and if beta software is in the distro, they ensure one is aware of it. IMO, for a newbie, SuSE can't be beaten. Every time I've been near RH, OTOH...
this isn't aimed at one person, or one distro, just a general blow of steam.. ignore if wanted....
<rant>
I recommend Suse to all my friends who are home users, but in commercial environments I use redhat. This is for various reasons; I've been using it long enough to know what goes where, I can setup/automate large scale systems very easily, it runs with very little management when I have set it up, and finally there are some non-technical issues like the managers and bean counters not having heard of suse or debian. There is more of a chance that they have heard of redhat...
Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but for the last few years I have never had any problems with Rh.. pre 6.2 was a different story though, but that's 3 years old now ;) I was in a heated discussion with friend recently saying how unstable M$ stuff is and he said that win2k is very stable, and that I was using the same reasoning and logic from win95 to judge win2k.. I have to admit that he was right... Now I'm not saying that we should all switch to winblows, but I am saying that just because things didn't work in teh past, the past shouldn't be used to judge the present... the first version of Suse I used was a compete nightmare (version 5.1), and I hated it with a passion. But now I am seriously considering giving 7.2 a try... I want encrypted file system out of the box, and it provides the features I want, so I'll make the switch...
At the end of the day, the best technical solution is not necessarly the best solution, M$ is a shining exmaple of how to do things that are technically wrong, but how to provide a good solution to people's problems </me hides under rock for the second time today>
I believe that what we alternative OS types should be doing is promoting the use of alternative systems. I want people to realise that they do have a choice in linux/BSD/other, and that the community can support them when they need help. I don't want people thinking that the community is arguing amoungst itself as to which OS/distro is technically superiour. Use what is a good solution for the job, and if that is slackware, mandrake, *bsd, suse, debian then so be it.. Don;t forget that somebody has to look after these machines, if a newbie is given a slackware CD then I would consider that an incorrect move, even if it is better than the rest...
Oh well, back to the land of reality ;)
</rant>
Sz
Just my thruppence..
I've found 7.2 of SuSE to be a bit akward. Firstly it positively refused to install on a clean partition on my Dell Pentium 4 box. I still don't have much clue as to why it refused to even go further than the choosing the installation type. Mandrake 8.0 was very similar - refused to even get to the partitioning section. However, Red Hat 7.1 did me proud and I managed to get Linux installed and behaved as good as gold.
As for Windows stability - Microsoft have done a much better job at securing the OS kernel within Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Within the past month of using XP, I've not had a single problem with using it. I still get the occasional problem within Windows 2000 though - the most recent being the HTML layout function within Windows Explorer got completely mucked up and as a result I couldn't access the Add/Remove Programs applet as all the buttons and layout were completely screwed. I must admit to still using Windows more than Linux as the environment where I work and play "demands" that I do - i.e. the missus complains if I use Linux and at work, I'm buggered if I have to use Access databases or Powerpoint presentations. Gnumeric is an excellent piece of software, but it is lacking in some functionality that I need that's present in Excel.
With regards to Linux (getting back on topic), I'm sitting running VMware with Windows 2000 under a Red Hat 7.1 system, Ximian Gnome 1.4, Evolution for work mail, contacts and calendar functions, and Gnumeric for compiling client work. I did run SuSE 7.1 a while back, but due to their method of re-arranging what I would call standard configuration locations, I got hacked off and went straight to Red Hat.
Not to say Red Hat 7.1 has not had it's fair share of problems. I had immense problems getting Ximian Gnome to install properly - complaining that /usr/bin/env is required for one of the freetype packages. Yet, /usr/bin/env is there and well. The solution was to completely uninstall Red Hat's copy of Gnome and start from scratch.
Regards,
Martyn
----- Original Message ----- From: "Neill Newman" neill@entora.co.uk To: alug@stu.uea.ac.uk Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2001 11:50 AM Subject: Re: [Alug] Lurkers (was new subscriber introductions)
Laurie Brown wrote:
That's one reason I'm still with SuSE after all this time. They haven't
messed me about at all,
and if beta software is in the distro, they ensure one is aware of it.
IMO, for a newbie, SuSE
can't be beaten. Every time I've been near RH, OTOH...
this isn't aimed at one person, or one distro, just a general blow of steam.. ignore if wanted....
<rant>
I recommend Suse to all my friends who are home users, but in commercial environments I use redhat. This is for various reasons; I've been using it long enough to know what goes where, I can setup/automate large scale systems very easily, it runs with very little management when I have set it up, and finally there are some non-technical issues like the managers and bean counters not having heard of suse or debian. There is more of a chance that they have heard of redhat...
Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but for the last few years I have never had any problems with Rh.. pre 6.2 was a different story though, but that's 3 years old now ;) I was in a heated discussion with friend recently saying how unstable M$ stuff is and he said that win2k is very stable, and that I was using the same reasoning and logic from win95 to judge win2k.. I have to admit that he was right... Now I'm not saying that we should all switch to winblows, but I am saying that just because things didn't work in teh past, the past shouldn't be used to judge the present... the first version of Suse I used was a compete nightmare (version 5.1), and I hated it with a passion. But now I am seriously considering giving 7.2 a try... I want encrypted file system out of the box, and it provides the features I want, so I'll make the switch...
At the end of the day, the best technical solution is not necessarly the best solution, M$ is a shining exmaple of how to do things that are technically wrong, but how to provide a good solution to people's problems </me hides under rock for the second time today>
I believe that what we alternative OS types should be doing is promoting the use of alternative systems. I want people to realise that they do have a choice in linux/BSD/other, and that the community can support them when they need help. I don't want people thinking that the community is arguing amoungst itself as to which OS/distro is technically superiour. Use what is a good solution for the job, and if that is slackware, mandrake, *bsd, suse, debian then so be it.. Don;t forget that somebody has to look after these machines, if a newbie is given a slackware CD then I would consider that an incorrect move, even if it is better than the rest...
Oh well, back to the land of reality ;)
</rant>
Sz
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On 21 Aug, Laurie Brown wrote:
That's one reason I'm still with SuSE after all this time. They haven't messed me about at all, and if beta software is in the distro, they ensure one is aware of it. IMO, for a newbie, SuSE can't be beaten. Every time I've been near RH, OTOH...
Just in case anyone has some money burning a hole in their pocket: Norwich staples has SuSE personal and professional editions on clearance just now. They also stock Mandrake.
-
Laurie Brown -
markj＠cloaked.freeserve.co.uk -
Martyn Drake -
Neill Newman