[plug] Red Hat vs Debian vs SuSE

[Rob Hall]

OK.  Time for a serious flame war!

<start_of_war>

Red Hat really really sucks!!  in my not so humble opinion!

I recieved a copy of Debian and the SuSE sample from LSL and have just had a
good play around.  Here's what I have come up with...

I attempted installation of both packages without refering to any manuals or
readme's. 

DEBIAN

The Debian install was fairly staight forward but did require a good knowledge
of my hardware.  It was easy to back track on an install (far easier than RH
that is) and very customisable.

The network card, which is a PCI NE2k compatible did not install correctly. 
When it came to selecting the access meathod, I chose CDROM, told it the cd was
/dev/hdd and then got the message "iso9660 not supported by kernal."

So that's as far as I got.  I didn't get to play with it live so my judgement
on Debian is still reserved.

Maybe someone can help me here with this error message.

SuSE

ABSOLUTLEY F****N' FAN-BLOODY-TASTIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you haven't tried this one, you should really give it a go.

The front end for the installation is nothing short of excellent.  There is
even an autoprobe for all hardware - very useful.

Creating a File System is very easy.  You can even easily choose the inode
density.  I CAN ACCESS MY FAT32 PARTITION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   OH JOY TO MY SOUL!!!

There is a "what if?" function that will tell you what the install is going to
do to your system.  Changing setup defaults and uninstalling packages is also
handled with ease - RH won't let you uninstall a package from the setup disk.

It lets you change the console font.... Has intellimouse support... gives you
colour by default in your terminal...

X is well set up with heaps of utilities.  All Window managers look good and
all have the same software links - ever changed window managers with RH and
then wondered where all your apps are?

KDE is setup with so many utilities that it will take me a while to go
through them all properly.

All in all it is a far better finished off product than RH.  I can't see myself
turning back in a hurry.  For the $4.95 that it cost me it was money well spent.

The only thing I didn't really like was that it didn't set up my Xserver for
me.  I ended up running XF86Setup, so it was no big deal really.

<rant>
I love it.  I love it.
The more I play the more I like it.
If you're contemplating a new install or in the mood for trying something
different you should give it a go.
</rant>

RH just does'nt have the polish that this distro does.


</start_of_war>



 -- Regards,

Rob Hall


Heights Computer Management

"Making computers work for you."

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