I am dissatisfied

[Michael Hipp]

Keith Antoine wrote:

> So I have Redhat 9.0 (shrike) and also Slackware 9.0 on cd's. As I 
> do not wish, as I have done in the past, start a flame war: Could I ask for 
> some detatched and dispasionate thoughts on both of these, ease of install 
> also how good are they seeing 100% of hardware installed, no real big 
> gotchas. 

I made a decision about 1.5 years ago (upon realizing the death of 
Caldera was imminent) to spend my time learning only RH. I think it is 
the easiest distro to use simply because there is the most support for 
it. A great deal of the books you pick up will be written, if not 
exclusively, to a great extent for RH.

Basically it just works. I've rarely had it not find all my hardware, 
even a fair amount that was not supposed to be supported yet (like a USB 
2.0 card last year). There are excellent independent sites that compile 
RPMs of packages that RH "forgot". Most commercial software has a 
pre-packaged RH version before anything else. It runs well on my 
ThinkPad 240Z (thanks DEP) not counting the WinModem.

And, oh yes, the RH documentation is excellent. I can actually find 
answers. Or if not answers, at least know how to ask the question. I 
refer to their docs often.

The BlueCurve GUI is controversial, but I think they have made a 
commendable attempt at something that badly needs doing - making the GUI 
consistent and usable for non-techies.

Their RH Update service makes it painless to keep up with security updates.

RH does occasionally do dumb things like include a 0.9x version of 
Mozilla (RH 7.3) and never update it to a production release. I wish it 
had some kind of decent LAN browser (aka Network Neighborhood). And I'll 
never get over the absence of Webmin and Caldera's "control panel" 
extensions.

I know nothing of Slackware, as I've heard you have to be 3 meters tall, 
weighing 200 kilos with chest hair like an Amazon rain forest. That 
description doesn't fit me, so I don't even try.

I wonder if we'll ever stop mourning for the once great Caldera (snif)?

Best regards from Arkansas,
Michael