Distirbuitions

[Matthew Carpenter]

begin  Net Llama! <netllama at linux-sxs.org>
(Tue, 31 Dec 2002 13:58:06 -0500 (EST))

> That's because i don't care about 90% of the precompiled packages that
> come with a distro.  I build my own version of most things, and rarely
> use any of the extras that come preinstalled.  What I want is a distro
> that is easy to install, and easy to maintain, and Redhat fits the bill
> for me. The KDE vs. Gnome wars are irrelevant to me, because i dont' use
> either. That alone negates the desktop.
This is where I started disagreeing with you.  If you use a system as a
Desktop OS (or more importantly, if you are going to recommend a Linux
Desktop for general consumption), it is going to be largely based on the
software included.  Most people don't have the "comfort level" and others
don't have the time to build all their own software.  Someday I'd like to
try Gentoo, but I haven't had the time yet...  I don't know how you make
the time.  I rely on so many software packages to get my job done that it
is very important for me to have a system that I can have standardized
packages to do so.  Having done a lot of both Server and Workstation
administration, I'm forced to think about a low-impact and low-maintenance
install, as well as the importance of similar systems.  You admin a couple
hundred workstations or servers and such things become dreadfully
important.

>  I used Caldera religiously up through
> their 2.4 release, and then came the great schism, and i moved to
> redhat. I tried out Debian about 3 years ago, and it was a complete
> nightmare to install and manage from my perspective. 
I know exactly what you're talking about.  I had to skip COLW31 but found
311 quite decent, however since it was DOA I have been searching for a
good distro, both for Server and Desktop.  Since I am finding SCO's
version of UL a pretty good match for me, and it's based on SuSE, I gave
SuSE another chance.  Red Hat has always had a lot of weird quirks which I
have never quite got over, although I've not used it much since 7.2.  

> Yea, i know there are a few
> Debian based distros with GUI installers out there, but i never washed
> the bad taste out of my mouth, and i still dislike the entire
> "GNU/Linux" zealotry that comes with Debian.  

:)  I liked David Bandel's description of removing the GNU from some files
from the debian distro.

> I installed SuSE about a year ago, and
> while the install was ok, managing it was also a nightmware with one of
> the most non-traditional filesystem layouts i'd ever seen (and this was
> compared to Redhat, Caldera & Debian).  

I also hated SuSE when I tried it in 7.1 (which was a HUGE improvement
over 6.0 which was the last SuSE I tried).  The filesystem WAS obtuse...
but since I found that UL, which is supposedly "LSB and FHS-compliant",
had the same base I decided I'd better figure out how it works...

> I've never attempted Slackware,
> but i don't see a reason to when i'm satisfied with what i've got. 
> Quite honestly, i've never understood why people spend weeks or months
> flying through numerous distros. 

I have personally only done this a couple times, at times when I either
felt the need to familiarize myself with what differences really equate to
in distros, or when Caldera announced their own distro-scuttling.

> > > MPlayer is one of my favorite apps.  If you build it from source,
> > > you can get some amazing performance improvements, not to mention a
> > > very high degree of customization.

What makes MPlayer better than Xine?  Something that optimises for
hardware at compile-time doesn't sound very robust or
professional-quality.  It just sounds like they are unnecessarily limiting
their software.  I like the run-time detection approach that Xine uses,
although Xine is far from perfect...
Since I am mostly interested in DVD and VCD/ASF/AVI playback, Xine seems
like a better match for me... although I do like the fact that you can
view QT through MPlayer.
Yes, I know you wrote the SxS's for Xine and MPlayer :)
If MPlayer is built without DeCSS but DeCSS is found on the system at
runtime, will it use it for DVD's?  Or will I have to go through and
rebuild MPlayer to make it so?

> The latest stable version of XFCE is 3.8.18.  Unless you haev that or
> possibly 3.8.16, you're not getting a clear picture of what's available.
> Also, the development version of XFCE, 4.x, is available from CVS, and
> is prolly more stable than KDE's latest.
SuSE 8.1 includes XFCE 3.8.16.  Did you run CDE or OS/2?  This looks a lot
like those...


Thanks for the dialog and Happy New Year.