plug RedHat 5.1

[John Summerfield]

On Wed, 10 Jun 1998, The Thought Assassin wrote:

> On Wed, 10 Jun 1998, Shackleton, Kevin wrote:
> > Would anyone like to do an _unbiased_ rundown of RH vs Debian?  I assume
> > there's strengths & weaknesses in both, consequently each should be
> > suited to particular applications.
> 
> Well, yes, I'd love to, but sadly I am not unbiased:)
> Nor have I had all that much experience with recent Redhat, though enough
> to know that I don't want to switch to it any time soon.
> Anyone tried RH5, D2, and chosen slackware or stampede? (Caldera and Suse
> are too close to RedHat for it to be unbiased, IMHO)
> They would be unbiased, but I am not sure they exist....
> 
> The best I can say is that RH focusses on ease of install/use for the
> newbie, and has more integrated support for commercial packages, while Deb
> focusses on reliability, flexibility, and standards-compliance.
> I would say that RH perhaps aims at desktop users, where Deb aims at
> production environs.
> One really has to use both for extended time periods to know which is
> right for you.

nonetheless (at least some of) the pros use RedHat. iiNet is one example
I'm certain of.

Something else I'm certain of: the RedHat description of the individual
packages is inadequate for the beginner. By way of example:
Name        : groff-tools                 Distribution: Hurricane
Version     : 1.11a                             Vendor: Red Hat Software
Release     : 3                             Build Date: Tue Nov  4
07:09:39 1997
Install date: Fri May  8 01:48:10 1998   Build Host: porky.redhat.com
Group       : Applications/Publishing       Source RPM:
groff-1.11a-3.src.rpm
Size        : 18401
Packager    : Red Hat Software <bugs at redhat.com>
Summary     : Miscellaneous tools used with groff.
Description :
Miscellaneous tools used with groff, which pertain to font handling and
aoutmatic option processing.


Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
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