[CS-FSLUG] Why?

Mon Jul 5 11:06:40 CDT 2004

I have played with some of the distributions that you have mentioned. I found Mandrake just too hard to install. With Lindows, it often took me three attempts to get the installation started. I do not understand why. I could not get Red Hat 9.0 to install at all. The live boot PCLinuxOS takes to long to boot up on my machine (mine is only 350MHz). Damn Small Linux (a knoppix based live boot) boots ups pretty quickly, but it does not do cookies. Corel linux I was able to install, but it would not boot up after installation. Hence I ended up taking the safe path of staying with Red Hat 8.0 which seems to work just fine for me. I may yet attempt to upgrade to Red Hat 9.0, and I plan to keep playing with Damn Small Linux, but at least I have something that works for my needs.

Christopher

----- Original Message -----
From: "N.Thompson" <n.thomp at sasktel.net>
Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2004 00:16:27 -0600
To: christiansource at ofb.biz
Subject: [CS-FSLUG] Why?

> I can't find a distribution I want to stick with its been like that 
> since I stopped using Mandrake 9.1, I 've found some that worked but 
> none that worked well and rather then complain I want to know why 
> everyone in the list thinks some of the distributions they've tried were 
> good or bad and what they think of my observations on the distributions 
> I've tried.
> 
> I'll start ;-)
> 
> Mandrake 10.0 worked but I didn't like it because I couldn't find the 
> software I wanted. I had Qt-Designer and Gambas but I wasn't pleased 
> with it, I couldn't find any good games and when there was a software 
> package I wanted to install such as Juk I couldn't find a Mandrake RPM 
> for it. Sure I could get the rpm package but getting a Mandrake Club 
> membership but I do not like the idea of paying for a subscription just 
> to get RPMS for a ditribution I hadn't even decided on keeping yet. Also 
> the difficulty in changing GTK themes was very annoying, I did manage to 
> change the themes with ease but the colour scheme Mandrake applied was 
> there to stay and that drove me up a wall.
> 
> SUSE Linux 9.1 was a little better then Mandrake, there was more and 
> better software installed by default, the games were much better and 
> there was no issue of a club, I would much preffer to buy a boxed set of 
> a distribution at a local store then have to worry about sending money 
> in the mail every month/year for a club membership. SUSE had its 
> problems though, for as long as I've been trying the distribution its 
> never had propper support for my USB jumpdrives and 9.1 seemed slower 
> then any other distribution on my computer also SUSE's attempts to apply 
> a global thinkeramik theme across all applications disfigured the 
> OpenOffice.org user interface a little. Aside from that I would have 
> decided to stick with it in a heartbeat if these problems had not been 
> present.
> 
> Slackware Linux took me hours to get set up but I had it working more or 
> less, I knew how to install software but I didn't know where to get it 
> and I was missing a lot of peace of mind not knowing where the 
> configuration tools were, not knowing whether the defaults were save and 
> not knowing whether or not I had a working firewall set up or how to set 
> one up. Using Slackware was very frustrating, either I didn't know what 
> to do next or if I did I didn't know how to get it done.
> 
> Gentoo took way to long to install and since it was all manual I didn't 
> even know if I had done it right, had I even managed to get it installed 
> I imagine using it would be as difficult as using Slackware.
> 
> Debian was a mess of packages, it had way too many installed by default 
> and most of the packages were very outdated. I also couldn't find any 
> configuration tools except for dselect and xf86config.
> 
> Fedora was a step up from Debian, it was more polished but I didn't like 
> how Red Hat had removed packages from KDE itself and tried to fill the 
> void with Gnome applications, also package management was no less clumsy 
> then with Debian and software was difficult for me to find because there 
> was no way for me to find out what I even wanted nevermind where to find it.
> 
> Lycoris, am I the only one who'se tried this distribution? I never hear 
> anyone else talking about it. Anyway Lycoris has some very old packages 
> such as KDE and a price tag like that of Windows, if you want to get 
> from Lycoris what you would get from any other distribution or even a 
> base setup of Windows XP you would have to spend more on Lycoris 
> Desktop/LX then on Windows because of how they broke up the packages and 
> put a hefty price tag on each group of applications. Lycoris to me 
> seemed like a scam they took packages which they didn't even put any 
> work into and packaged them up into groups that costed anywhere between 
> $20 and $50 or more USD.
> 
> Lindows/Linspire I got a free version on CD and it was absolutely bare, 
> there was literally nothing in it except for a text editor, web browser 
> and e-mail client. A subscription to the Click 'n Run warehouse would 
> have fixed that but I didn't know what was available and I can't stand 
> distributions that are insecure (ie no root password, logs in 
> automatically) from the point of being installed, even if that can be 
> changed with a little configuration it takes away any peace of mind I 
> may have had concerning security in that distribution.
> 
> With all distributions my main problem is the availability of up to date 
> packages, most of the major distributions right now for example do not 
> have the X.org X11 packages, Qt 3.2 or newer or KDE 3.2.2 or newer and 
> if they do its because they're a difficult to use (most likely source 
> based) distribution. Also configuration tools should not just be 
> installed but they should also be easy to find or have a simple naming 
> scheme or even a central program for findind and starting each one like 
> OLM in Onebase Linux.
> 
> Those are my thoughts but since I already knew them I'm waiting to find 
> out what the rest of you think.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> ChristianSource FSLUG mailing list
> Christiansource at ofb.biz
> http://cs.uninetsolutions.com
> 

-- 
_______________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10