3/12    RedHat, Suse, or Debian? I am seriously thinking of installing
        one on my machine...
        \_ Free RedHat as you know is has reached it's end. RedHat 9 was the
           last of it. There will still be RedHat Professional, which is
           RHEL but only costs $90. I highly recommend Fedora if you want
           to keep up with the latest and greatest in Linux.
           http://fedora.redhat.com -shac
        \_ Die SuSe ich nicht fur die motdhozen unt warezhausen.
        \_ USE LINUX!
        \_ have you used linux before? you can start with Knoppix. It doesn't
           touch your harddrive, just boots from a CD and runs. it's useful
           for those who want to taste linux before they actually commit to it
           \_ Yes, I've used slackware back in the old days...
        \_ RIDE BIKE!
        \_ Debian. It's a communitty, not a corporation. It's the easiest
           to maintain. Once you've installed it, you can upgrade
           everything, including the kernel. No need to reinstall
           a net version later.
           \_ Suse detects the hardware for you, with Debian, do I have to know
              what my hardware is?
              \_ You want hardware detection?  Install Knoppix.  Knoppix is a
                 Debian distro.  Boot from the cd, then do a hdx-install.
                 Knoppix is the best HW detecting distro I've seen.  Then use
                 apt-get to get up to date.  Did that the other day at the
                 office, was the easiest linux install yet.
                \_ Debian's hw detection isn't as good as SuSE, but it is
                   fairly good. (SuSE isn't perfect either, we've had lots
                   of problems with video cards/fb's with SuSE 8.1, 9 and
                   SLES).
                   \_ I don't understand why all distributions don't have the
                      exact same quality for HW detection.  Aren't the routines
                      open source and GPL??
                      \_ So?  That doesn't mean everyone uses the same one.
                         Each distribution has its own installer.
                         \_ Yes, yes, but underneath what is the excuse for not
                            borrowing the HW detection code for different parts
                            from each other?  Why reinvent the wheel?  Isn't
                            that supposed to be one of the benefits of OS?
                                \_ Not everyone wants to build all the bits
                                   the same way. RH and SuSE build the bits
                                   differently (incorporating different patches,
                                   testing different kernel versions, glibc
                                   version, XFree86 fb drivers, &c.). RH's
                                   hw detection requires you to have things
                                   built in the same way as RH builds them,
                                   since SuSE (and Debian) do things differently
                                   (for various reasons, i18n/l10n, stability,
                                   &c.) RH's stuff won't work for other
                                   distros.
                                   \_ what?  I'm talking about HW detection,
                                      not how drivers are installed or what
                                      version.  The hardware is the same.  So
                                      why don't they all *detect* the HW to
                                      the same level of quality?
                   \_ which one is debian's hd detection? it doesn't detect
                      much for me.. do i need to run it manually?
                \_ Hardware is usually obvious. Read the numbers on the
                   chips. and '/sbin/lspci'. Google for specs.
        \_ If you have never used Linux before but have some familiarity
           with svr4 type systems (Solaris, HP-UX), then I would recommend
           RH 8 or 9. RH is easy to setup and provides a pretty good learning
           environment to get comfortable with Linux. If you want to deploy
           RH for some real purpose you may start running into problems with
           their default tool-chain (RH has shipped with buggy snapshot jvms
           and gcc versions instead of stable versions) and RPM-hell.
           If you have already used Linux, try Debian; it isn't as easy to
           get running but it is far more stable than RH and is much easier
           to maintain (apt is very nice).
           I've heard good things about Debian-Gentoo which is supposed to
           provide /usr/src and /usr/ports type source access but I haven't
           tried it out yet.
           \_ it's just gentoo, it's got nothing to do with debian.
                \_ Sorry my mistake. Someone at work told me that Gentoo
                   was part of the Debian GNU/{Linux,HURD} stuff.
           \_ Define what you mean by "RPM hell"
              \_ i imagine rpm hell is the situation where you're trying to
                 install an rpm not built by redhat inc. and there is a
                 bunch of other dependencies you have to find rpms for. this
                 doesn't happen in debian or gentoo because they have
                 centralized repositories for this stuff.
              \_ Rpm dependency handling is problem. Rpm determines the
                 dependencies of an rpm on files and libraries when the
                 rpm is built. If the system that you are installing the
                 rpm on has a different set of files and libraries (say
                 you've applied some security/stability patches) than
                 the system the rpm was built on you often run into
                 install problems forcing you to use --force or --nodeps
                 which can leave your rpm db in an inconsistent state.
                 RH frequently releases updates that must be installed
                 in some specific order otherwise you can't install all
                 the updates. The problem is also present in commercial
                 pgms that try and build one set of rpms for a large set
                 of systems (RH 6 and newer and most versions of SuSE).
        \_ What are you using now?  *BSD?  *Windows?
        \_ http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/10.0/features
           URL self-explanatory.
           \_ Isn't that French? Plus it has all that gay star/magic motif.
              cf. TV magic queers.
              \_ you'd rather be running "potato"?
                 \_ woody !
                    \_ forget mr potato head, go with the sarge!
              \_ Try it.
        \_ Debian. It's maintained by a communitty, not a corporation. It's
           the most efficient to maintain. Once you've installed it, you can
           upgrade everything, including the kernel. No need to reinstall a
           new version later.
        \_ You should use SCO UNIX.
        \_ I like Suse, but ymmv.  I'd stay away from RedHat because they've
           abandoned non-commercial users.
                 \_ I don't have time to mess with Linux now. Back when I did,
                    Mandrake was actually the first one I tried. I don't really
                    see the point of Mandrake now, it seems redundant.
                    If I was going to use one now I'd probably go with Gentoo.
                    I don't know what I'd use for "real work".