why I didn't choose GRML

Raul A. Gallegos raul at asmodean.net
Wed Jun 28 14:29:29 EDT 2006


* propaine <propaine at verizon.net> [060628 10:14]:
> Since I'm considering whether to upgrade Fedora or switch to something else,
> can you tell me why you decided that GRML is not for you?  Thanks!


I'd be happy to. But first let me say that I like GRML linux very much 
and am not interested in starting any sort of distro war here.

I don't just use Linux as an end user. I run my own mail server, web 
server, ssh server, etc, you get the picture. Right now it seems that 
because GRML is based on Debian unstable there are sometimes problems. 
Packages are constantly updated which is the nature of the beast and 
from time to time a package might break your system. Because I run a 
production server I cannot run an unstable os. I've used Debian before 
and liked it very much and even considerred going back to it. However 
one of the main concerns here was time. I know how to install Fedora 
very quickly and needed to get up and running as quick as possible. Here 
is where GRML originally came into the picture. I love how you can 
simply pop the cd in and have a running Linux system right away. On 
three machies I tried it on both using software and hardware speakup 
synthesizers they worked from the get go. So, it's not GRML's fault 
really. It's just for my particular needs I need something which is not 
unstable in the way of packages.

When I ran grml2hd it gave me fits and I had to manually tweak the 
script to make it possible for me to install. I forget the line number 
but it had to do with the code which checks the hard drive space 
available. There was a /1024 line which was throwing it off. So, I took 
that line out and hard coded in the space value so the script would 
continue.

On top of that dovecot had to be tweaked quite a bit to get pop logins 
working right and really, the list goes on.

This is not to say that GRML is bad and in fact I really love their mutt 
configureation style. I've actually used some of those settings for my 
muttrc now. I also like the fact that it boots so quickly although I 
realize that GRML is not the only one so take that for what it's worth.

Hope this helps.


-- 
Raul A. Gallegos ... IliwSsmc




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