SUSE vs. Debian (lindows)

[Net Llama!]

On 01/18/04 07:26, Joel Hammer wrote:

> Just to share an experience of comparing SUSE (rpm) and
> lindows (debian).
> 
> I blew away my debian (lindows) box (make modules_install
> is a dangerous command). It wouldn't boot anymore.

I don't follow you at all.  I don't see how installing modules is 
dangerous, or how it can prevent you from booting the OS.  This sounds 
like PEBCAK to me.

> So, I installed SUSE pro 9.0 on another drive to try
> to recover the lindows installation. (After failing to
> do this with knoppix.) I also wanted to see what I was
> missing with lindows.  It installed easily, but was
> very slow. It set the time wrong. It didn't detect my
> old lindows installation and configure grub for it, it
> didn't automatically configure fstab and mount my other
> drives. Installing additional software was torture. I got
> tired of changing cd's constantly, and yast worked but
> what a nuisance. With apt-get or the warehouse, you can
> install numerous packages with just a few commands, then
> go do something else while they install themselves. And to
> my amazement, newly installed software, like the daemons
> in /etc/init.d, was not automatically configured. You had
> to do that yourself! So, I was not too impressed.

Ok, so that's SuSE.  What about the other distros out there?  BTW, which 
daemons did you expect to have automatically configured in /etc/init.d ?

> I then downloaded the new version of lindows from their
> warehouse (using my other lindows box) and burned it to cd.
> 
> Lindows installed in about 10 minutes or less, detected
> and configured lilo.conf to boot both my old and new
> installation, and automatically detected and mounted my
> other drives.  It has the 2.4.23 kernel, including those

Oh, you mean the one with the huge exploit?  That sounds inexcusable to 
me.  But seeing how lindows let's you run everything as root, i guess 
security isn't a priority for them.

> So, I said goodbye to rpm based systems, hopefully
> forever. I also learned that my inability to burn and
> boot a new kernel was not due to lindows or debian. I
> couldn't do it with SUSE, either. I just don't get the
> hang of initrd yet. My next project.

initrd is not required to build a kernel for _ANY_ hardware.  You could 
always compile the support that you think you need in the initrd into 
the kernel directly and get the same result.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L. Friedman                       	       netllama at linux-sxs.org
Linux Step-by-step & TyGeMo: 		    http://netllama.ipfox.com

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