Why does it need that much hard disk space?

[Toby Fisher]

On Wed, 8 May 2002, Dawes, Stephen wrote:

> Let's not get into distribution wars again.
>
> You can install as little or as much of Redhat as you like. It is no
> different then any other distribution in that respect. One of the bigger
> differences between distributions is the package manager. A number of
> distributions including RedHat use RPM as the package manager.
> Similarly, Debian, and I am sure others, use APT, or whatever it is
> called, as their package manager. Granted they are other differences
> between distributions, that I won't get into in this note because I
> don't know of them all. What I will say though, is that before slamming
> a one distribution over another, maybe take a step back and think of the
> other operating system that is made to run on the pc platform that not
> open source. Open source is why Linux is where it is today. Open source
> is why there are so many different distributions. Instead of slamming a
> distribution, or saying that one distribution is better then another,
> why not work towards getting speakup working on the distribution that
> the user brings to the discussion. After all, isn't it better to have
> speakup working with Linux regardless of the distribution? I'd say so!

One of the other major differences between distros is how they arrange
their config files.

I think, though I don't know, that Slackware is fairly unique in limitting
itself to a small number of config files in /etc/rc.d.  Some people like
this, some people hate this, and prefer the method of Redhat etc which is
more unixish of having simlinks all over the place to each run-level and
being able to start and stop things easily.  I will admit, this does have
its advantages, and I appppreciate how this may be appealing, particularly
for the beginner.

I guess what I'm saying is, it depends how much you're going to want to
play and learn.  In my view, Slackware makes it easier to modify things as
there's less to miss when modifying config files, but for a system that'll
be set up once, and may never haved to be  changed, or at least, not the
startup scripts, then Redhat or similar is your distro.  I like to play
and fiddle, which is why I use Slackware.  I think I also chose Slackware
because when I first found Linux, that's all their was, or at least, all
that could be relied upon.  In those days, RH could be a bit flaky because
they used different libraries, and things were in different places so
compile efforts of new software downloaded from the web had a tendancy to
break, but I don't know if I'd have the same affinity with Slackware if I
was starting now.

Sorry for the ramble, but I guess what I'm saying is do not be swayed by
other people's choices, even mine, because as you'll have gathered,
distribution, and therefore package manager and various other aspects of
the Linux experience can be personal things, and you might not get it
right for you first time.  The good thing is, as long as you keep your
data backed up somewhere, if you decide you don't like the way a distro
does things, simply start again!  Linux.org doesn't keep tabs on how many
times you flatten your hard drive.  *grin*

Good luck, and happy choosing.

-- 
Toby Fisher	Email: toby at g0ucu.freeserve.co.uk
Tel.: +44(0)1480 417272	Mobile: +44(0)7974 363239
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