[PLUG] Linux distro recommendation as a replacement for SuSE

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

someone wrote:
> I think all of the major Linux distributions could be pushed 
> aside by one that is: documented better, current, and designed to
> run in a small footprint.  I wonder what Puppylinux is based on
> and if any of the small Linux distributions will compete with 
> the RHEL clones?
Most of the "small" Linux distros are based on Debian, often via a 
remastered Knoppix LiveCD. Damn Small used to be that way. I personally 
liked Morphix -- they started with Knoppix but made the base LiveCD only 
200 MB and set things up so it was easy to add packages from the Debian 
repositories.

You don't hear a whole heck of a lot about Knoppix these days -- or for 
that matter, many of the other Debian-based distros. And you don't hear 
a whole heck of a lot about Slackware. If you're going down the Debian 
path, you pretty much have to go with Debian itself or with Ubuntu.

If you want a "stable" community distro, Debian stable, CentOS and 
Slackware are probably the most stable. Fedora, being a "proving ground" 
for RHEL, is a lot edgier than those three.

>   We are starting to see embedded Linux distributions,
> but they seem to be mostly specialty distros that are hard to find out
> about.  These distros appear to be very tightly tied to specific
> hardware for the most part.  A linux distro that targets certain Linksys
> routers which has been mentioned recently on this list comes to mind.
>   
Somebody also mentioned Gumstix. I just got one :). Most of the 
ARM-based embedded systems will run off of "buildroot". I don't know 
about how stable it is yet, but my Netstix comes with an Ethernet port 
and a compact flash slot and boots up with DHCP with a functioning ssh 
server and web server. Available software includes Ruby and SQLite, so 
I'm planning to max out the compact flash slot and see if I can get 
Rails running on it. I think *that's* very cool. :)

> I've tried gentoo and I don't like it.  If you don't like the poor
> documentation that comes with the 2.6 kernel, I seriously doubt that
> you will like gentoo much.
Well ... here we disagree. I think Gentoo's overall documentation is the 
best there is! They've led me through some pretty hairy upgrades.
>   I'm sorry, but I don't understand portage
> very well and I worry that a system that trusts it's package management
> system and recompiling software to stay current is going to be nothing
> more than a maintenance nightmare.  In a world where no upgrade can
> cause loss of functionality or break programs, gentoo might shine.  In
> reality, making a mistake in how you compile one package or upgrading
> something that can't be without replacing everything is not the sort of
> situation you want on a production server.
Well ... on a production server, you only need to change something to 
close a security hole or fix a bug in a package you are using. Where I 
think Portage *currently* falls down relative to "up2date/yum" or "apt" 
is in the notification strategy. Up2date, for example, will tell you 
whether an update is a security fix, a bug fix or new functionality. So 
you can choose to only do critical updates. With Gentoo, right now, you 
have to read the change logs. I think I *could* run a production Gentoo 
stable server as easily as someone else could run a CentOS or "Sarge" 
stable server, but I've been working with Gentoo almost exclusively for 
years.

I know the Gentoo people have plans to provide better notification 
strategies, but their user base probably wants other things more, like a 
point and click installer, better LiveCD tools, and more packages in the 
repository.

> I think gentoo magnifies the
> confusion of updates that people already feel on yum and apt based Linux
> systems.  Updating in general in my opinion hasn't been implemented well
> in any popular operating system at this time.
>   
Have a look at http://www.rpath.com/rbuilder/. They talk a good game, 
anyhow.

-- 
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, FBG, AB, PTA, PGS, MS, MNLP, NST, ACMC(P)
http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/

If God had meant for carrots to be eaten cooked, He would have given rabbits fire.