Re: [TCLUG:18310] Mandrake and eOne

["Kevin R. Bullock" <kbullock@ringworld.org>]

First, to respond to the CD-mounting question, Mandrake 7's default is to
use the automounter on the CD and floppy drives, so you shouldn't have to
mount it manually. And if you're getting I/O errors, I assume you got the
CD mounted somehow, manually or otherwise.

On Tue, 30 May 2000, Lord Xoi wrote:

> What would be the main differences among all of these anyways?

This is a complex question. I'll go through some of my impressions of the
different distros. The main differences are in the package management tools,
and in the locations of the init scripts (which you don't need to worry too
much about).

Debian: My main distro. Designed for people who know Linux reasonably
well. For first-time installers, not quite as friendly. Uses dpkg (the
Debian package tool) along with apt to manage packages.

RedHat: One of the first commercial distros. Nice to install,
user-friendly, not quite as admin-friendly as Debian. Uses rpm (the RedHat
package manager) to manage packages.

SuSE: Popular in Europe. A solid distro with a nice install and a good
post-install configuration tool (called YaST). Also allows the easiest 
Internet-based updates of any rpm-based distro I've used. Uses rpm.

Corel: Built on Debian, adding a nicer installer and generally making the
distribution more accessible to end-users.

Storm: Also built on Debian, with a nice installer etc. As far as I can
tell, though, it's still beta quality.

Mandrake: Built on RedHat. It doesn't add much as far as I can tell --
it just tries to be a little bit friendlier, or at least a bit more
Windows-like, than RedHat. In my experience, it mostly just fails.

Slackware: The distro for true hackers. Barely has a package system (it
uses .tgz's to install from, which are just archives with / as a base
directory and an extra install script thrown in). Any software you want
that isn't in the basic distribution pretty much has to be compiled and
installed manually. I use it when I want to cut my teeth on a hacker's OS.
:)

Pacem in Terris / Mir / Shanti / Salaam / Heiwa
Kevin R. Bullock