Distro comparison

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

As I've said, I need to upgrade my server's software.  I'm just done with 
Red Hat.  I've been using Red Hat on my server since version 4.0, but they 
finally pushed me over the edge.  My decision is a tough one, because my 
box is both my firewall/server and my workstation, so the mix of software 
is a little different than what most people need.

As I've also said, the leading candidates are Suse, Mandrake, and FreeBSD.  

Suse represents the option most different from RH while still being 
RPM-based, they have the advantage of having every package under the sun on 
the disks and no lame MP3 or video program restrictions.  And I can bombard 
Jerry with questions as payback for the years of my answering *his* 
questions ;)
Questions:
- Can most Red Hat RPM's be loaded onto a Suse box without complications?
- Is there a mechanism like up2date to keep my box current?
- If I have a full 8.2 pro, is it worth my while to get 9.0?
  If so, what makes 9.0 so much better?

Mandrake is as close to being Red Hat as you can get without actually being 
Red Hat.  However, it seems that (1) They are financially unstable, and 
have either filed chapter 11 or will do so soon, and (2) they followed Red 
Hat's lead by *MANGLING* the default look and feel of both KDE and Gnome, 
which pisses me off to no end.  I have not seen the replaced graphics so I 
can't comment on how good or bad they are (Red Hat's are awful), but the 
fact that they did it bothers me.
Questions:
- Can most Red Hat RPM's be loaded onto a Mandrake box without
  complications?
- Is there a mechanism like up2date to keep my box current?
- How are the tweaked graphics for KDE?  My main complaint about the Red
  Hat ones are that they became very stylized and very much like each other,
  so they became less identifiable as to their function.  It's a very
  "user-friendly consumerish teenage girlish" look.
- What do you all think of the chances for the company long-term?

FreeBSD would be the greatest departure from Red Hat.  It would also offer a 
cleaner kernel and possibly more efficient operation.  The ports system 
seems better than RPM's because I hate binary databases for system 
configuration.  I wish I knew more about FreeBSD, but what I've read about 
it I like.
Questions:
- Are ports for new versions of software generally available soon after
  release?
- How different is it to maintain than Linux?
- Is all the talk about extra security and stability a bunch of crap?  I
  know it certainly used to be true, but is it still true?


Note: I really liked the talk about Gentoo at the last meeting.  There are 
two reasons I don't think it's for me though.
- My server is my mail server, so I cannot have it down for half a day while 
it compiles and downloads things from the internet.
- While I much prefer text config files to binary ones, there are certain
  config files which are very hard to do by hand, like X11 configuration.  I
  don't know that I would want to go with a distro that had no tools to help
  with config files like that one.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
DDDD   David Kramer         david at thekramers.net       http://thekramers.net
DK KD  
DKK D  You are so clueless that if we stripped you naked, soaked you in
DK KD  clue musk, and dropped you into a field full of horny clues, You
DDDD   still would not have a clue.