On Saturday 13 November 2004 20:20, Peter L. Peres wrote: > On Sat, 13 Nov 2004, Byron A Jeff wrote: > > You really want to start a religious debate? "Use Slackware..." is often > > fighting words. I've said them a couple of times in my day. > > This is really simple. There are a score of chores to do to make a linux > machine work as you need. There are two options: you pay and someone else > does the chores, so you can click on pretty buttons and nearly everything > works (RedHat, Suse, others), or you don garden working garb, cancel all > social functions for 2-3 weeks and do it with Slackware. This is a pretty good metaphor! Mind if I borrow it? It extends pretty nicely (before it falls apart like all metaphors eventually do) into things like, "With the do-it-yourself gardens, you can put the roses over there, and the chrysanthemums over here, and the dog run in the back corner if you like." The *ultimate* in Linux geekiness, would have to be the Linux-from-Scratch project. www.linuxfromscratch.org Want to have no social life for a year or so? (Okay, I'm exaggerating...) If you want your computer to do EXACTLY what you tell it to, LFS is the way to go! Pack a lunch, you're going to be at the keyboard for a while. Most Linux folks consider LFS a good mind-exercise, but not a great way to build a solid working Linux system for themselves. But the option is always there. Up from that level, so-called "source-based" Linux distributions like Gentoo are real close to LFS. (Of course, I hate the term source-based -- all software starts out as source code somewhere, it's just a matter of who compiles it for you. You, or someone else.) Binary-distributions (the majority of them) then compete with each other on package management and ease of installation. Remember, when you get finished installing the system, the software is pretty-much exactly the same. These distros are typically the ones people start with. Examples are Debian, SuSE, RedHat, Mandrake... all the "big names" you've probably heard of. Typically but not always, the older the distribution, the more obscure it may appear to be when trying to load/run it. Slackware is old, very old, and hard for people without Unix knowledge ahead of time to understand. But the flip-side of this coin is that Slack is extremely flexible. Later distros like RedHat, SuSE, and Mandrake are much less flexible and tend to be "brittle" and break a lot if you try to highly customize them to your tastes. And finally "Live CD" distributions create a fully working Linux on CD and then actually RUN from the CD unless you copy the system to your hard disk. You do have the option on most of these to automatically do that installation. Now here's an interesting twist -- many of these are based off of the Binary distributions and can be morphed into one... An example is Knoppix. It is a Live-CD that is based off of, but highly modified version of Debian Linux. People use Knoppix to do the installation to the drive, and then change the package manager's configuration to pull further updates from Debian. There's a number of sites that explain how to do this. Kinda a nifty way to get past the pain of installing stuff, as many of the Live-CD distros are far ahead of their brethren when it comes to auto-detecting hardware and installation of appropriate drivers. A *very* good resource for looking at all the possible distros out there is www.distrowatch.com -- they list virtually EVERYTHING - even the podunk little distros some guy created in his spare time. A good example of that, and a pretty highly respected one is MEPIS. Some guy decided that he had some ideas on how to make a better version of Debian, so he did it. He's got a small but loyal following and lots of volunteers now, helping him stay ahead of the (moving) curve. There's a linux distribution for every possible taste and preference out there - that's both the strong suit of Linux and it's frustration to new users. Old linux users have often "tried them all" after a few years - window shopping their extra PC's through various distros until they really like and feel like they've had a good experience with one of them. Then something turns a switch and some contentedly enjoy what they've found, while others get zealout-like tendencies to want to convert everyone to their way of thinking - similar to politics! ;-) But the thing to remember is that at the end of the day, the kernel and toolchain are EXACTLY the same across all of the linuxes (we'll leave the special "hardened Linux systems" like the NSA Linux distribution out of this discussion, that's an advanced topic) and if you find a piece of software that your distro doesn't have available as a package or a source-based tarball and make instructions, you can download the source and build it with a simple make command. The power of Linux is in having the source code of everything that you're using... don't like something about a particular piece of software -- open up the source and change it. Or write a better one... Hoping to be more helpful than just hopeful with this post... one of the decent links for newbies to Linux to look for documentation on various Linux things is a collaborative effort at SourceForge, http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net . Another thing that's NOT mentioned enough by people helping others get started in Linux who aren't close by - find out if there is a local Linux users group and go! You find out a couple of important things... a) what distro people in the area tend to like and use... this is important if you ever need help... and b) who those people are. In the two local LUG's here, there are not only regular folks using Linux, but at least ten Linux professionals or consultants who do Linux for a living hanging around, and you get to pick their brains for free. They normally charge for this stuff. (Myself included, although I'm more of a Unix generalist than a Linux specialist, but I track certain things I'm interested in within Linux very closely and can answer questions on those topics, mostly server-related stuff, with ease.) The "community" feel of Linux not only shouldn't be ignored by new Linux users, it should be embraced and enjoyed. Finding people who are doing neat things with their computers and hanging out with them once a week or month or whatever, is always a good brain exercise. Nate _______________________________________________ http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist