Distro comparison

[mark at buttery.org (Mark J. Dulcey)]

David Kramer wrote:
> 
> 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?

The majority of Red Hat RPMs will load on SuSE, though you occasionally 
have to force them in with --nodeps or set up a symlink or two. (Library 
dependencies sometimes fail because the two distros use different naming 
schemes.)

There is YOU (YaST Online Update) to keep your system up to date. The 
service is free. I have found gwdg.de to be a much more reliable site to 
contact for the updates than suse.com. 8.2 and later set up an automatic 
update watcher by default; you can even set up completely automatic 
updating if you want to. (I don't care for that sort of thing.)

I don't have 9.0 yet, so I can't say what makes it better.

> 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?

I don't know about more stable than Linux, but it certainly isn't less 
stable. It's a very solid OS, even under server load.

The main downside of FreeBSD is that people aren't as quick to port 
applications to it as they are to Linux; there just isn't as much "buzz" 
going on. But you can run Linux apps.