Distro comparison

[jullrich at euclidian.com (Johannes Ullrich)]

ok. I got to chime in on this. Just can't skip a good distro
bashing ;-)

I am a "RedHat guy". Started out on Slackware, but later 
switched to Redhat. The main reasons:
- RedHat's distro have proven to be very stable.
- installation and maintenance is very easy (I don't use
  the GUI's., so it may be even easier ;-) ).
- community support is great (but RedHat's support sucks).
- RedHat is very flexible. For the simple reason that a lot
  of add ons / changes /configuration choices are well 
  documented if you start out with RedHat.

I am running a couple racks of servers running RedHat. 
Mostly 7.3. There is one RH Advanced Server and a few
older machines. My main "desktop" (its actually a Dell
Laptop) is running RedHat 9 with Ximian Desktop 2.

When I switched my Laptop from RedHat 7.3, I did give Suse 8.2
a good try. "On the box" (yea, I bought the boxed version),
it had some features I likes, likes ACL's, encrypted file systems,
and ipsec. I ran it for about 2 weeks but found that it just
wasn't working right for me (maybe because I am more into Gnome
and Suse is more KDE centric).

With respect to flexibility: I am having no issues swapping
kernels on RedHat to custom kernels with grsecurity and other
patches. Running the latest 2.6 kernels wasn't quite as simple,
but it worked.

RedHat's commercial efforts: I am running a 'free' service 
myself (www.dshield.org). While its free to users, its not
free to run the extensive backend. Keeping the service running
depends on sponsors with deep enough pockets (SANS Institute
in this case) that are willing to spend some money for a good
thing. I can see how RedHat would like to make some money. After
all, its not that they are hugely profitable (just about broke
even the last couple quarters?). Getting a boxed version on
store shelfs was likely more a PR idea then a money maker.

For example, Linux heavy waits like Linux are not even attempting
their own distro. While they donate a lot of resources to "the
cause", they happily refer to RedHat if someone would like to
buy their products with Linux.

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Johannes Ullrich                     jullrich at euclidian.com
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