SUSE or Mandrake!?!?!

[lsakhvoruk]

I really want to get into Linux and was just wondering which distribution is better SUSE or Mandrake. If there is not a clear line then if you could please list pros and cons of the two. Thanks to all. Leo.

[mairving]

Mandrake would be my preference. They are a little bit more newbie friendly. Also they are usually the first to be on the cutting edge. SUSE is not bad even though the default languange is German.

How do you plan on getting into Linux? By installing it on it's own hard drive or by installing it on the same drive with Windows?

[WickedLittleSlaveBoy]

I wouldn't choose either one, but if that's the only choice, go with Mandrake...it's more like Red Hat, Caldera and Slackware, and so on.


mairving:

if you want a cutting(err, bleeding?) edge distribution, you have to check out Gentoo....it goes above and beyond kernel tweaks and latest releases of the same old packages....maybe the first reiserFS distribution(dunno, not keeping track), with XFS on the way.

the most up to date as far as I've seen. the question is, is it too far ahead of the rest?

[mairving]

WickedLittleSlaveBoy, I still laugh when I see your name here. Where did it come from?

Anyway, I originally became interested in Linux with Mandrake 7.0. Currently I am running Slackware 7.0. I use it primarily as an Apache server for web development. It is a P200 box so I don't really need cutting edge. On another computer I have Windows ME/Mandrake 7.2 as a dual booter. I also have an IMAC with OS 9.1. I wish I had a copy of OS X to play with on it. I have also been wanting to play around with Zope but Apache is hard to beat.

[WickedLittleSlaveBoy]

gosh, I've used this name for maybe 2-3 years, so I'm not really sure what sparked the name...I think it was something someone once said to me, but I might be remembering something from a movie or a song....I never claimed to have intact brain cells, now....hehehe.

guess my first distro was Red Hat 5.1...moved up to 5.2, then I found Caldera 1.3 and a SuSE distro 5.(something?), Caldera was really clean, so that was the first time I decided against Red Hat. then I met up with Red Hat 6.0 and Mandrake 6.3 again(there were others in there, as well) and they were both pretty beautiful, more especially the Mandrake distributions.....then came the GUI install, ala Caldera's Lizard which was good, but with the GUI install came the unholy package storm, I started finding myself with 20 mail programs and as much of freshmeat.net as they could possibly throw on CD....started to miss the charm of the old days, the days before reliance on precompiled binaries...when rpm was just another package manager....the days when I didn't have to start removing stuff as soon as I got the system install, not to mention editing the rc scripts to shut down the legion of daemons I never wanted installed...enter SlackWare and Debian, but I never liked the way Debian did stuff. there was something magickal about slack, though. of course, I've become disenchanted with Linux in general recently...

enter OpenBSD and NetBSD....

ya know, I bought a SparcStation 5/110 and a Mac to run Linux and I ended up running MacOS on the Mac(but I still have hope for GNU/Darwin) and Solaris and NetBSD on the Sparc...because Linux ran like utter **** on both.

so, as of today, I have no machine running GNU/Linux, my main laptop got converted to OpenBSD and I'm running Solaris on my old Pentium 166 system, then there is this system and my gf's laptop which have to run one version of Windows or another.....

is there life beyond Linux.....damn right, it's only a kernel....I routinely install all of the GNU stuff I can on my Solaris boxes and my BSD boxes...I just have less headaches now.

[Statica]

Speaking of being disenchanted by Linux, I think its abt time to throw Linus out of the loop and perhaps make AC the cog of kernel development. Linus' and his other commitments are proving costly.

[WickedLittleSlaveBoy]

I think you may be on to something there. with all of the recent cases of people breaking the GPL's legal obligations or even some of the ones that break it in spirit, Linus is in a bad spot at Transmeta....it seems like he would have thought about that in the first place, the company's original secretive behaviour was as far from the spirit of the GPL as possible...a spirit that he once took seriously, even more seriously than the GPL in the beginning...until he put it under the GPL.

his behaviour hasn't been all that benevolent, either....starting way back in the early days, he already showed his flaming spirit and utter lack of respect for any accomplishments besides his own in his arguements with Tanenbaum. it seems that the last little drama his quotes on Mach produced made him check himself, but it seems like he's a little too quick to show his arrogance these days.....we're talking Bill Gates arrogance. seems a little unfair that he should take the credit for the phenomenon when less than 5% of you average distribution is actually Linus inspired code. more like 1% if you don't install kernel source.

the whole Linux scene needs a good shot in the arm, though....

[Statica]

Yeah his commitments that kept Linux floundering for over a year (see thread on Mandrake sales down, I'd say that has a significant relationship), arent even paying off .. Transmeta Crusoe has yet to see the conceptual stage at least on US soil, Midori Linux seems to be along the lines of one of those Win 98 SE vs Win 98 vs Win 95 fiascos that we dump on Micro$oft for .. a repackaged scaled down specialized version, nothing spectacular about it.

If ever there was a doubt that absolute power corrupts this is it, he really has constricted the continuity of Linux. I've been very vocal in the past about the Open Source community, but here's a reason why I believe its all going down the tubes .. the entire community waiting for one guy , who has a different day job, to approve what the community does. Over the past year and a half, ,my systems have gone away from using the Linux kernel to using the ac-threads, for those desktops I use Linux with, for servers, have gone away from Linux entirely and gone back to the BSD world. Enough of these me-me babies, who cant get enough of themselves.

[WickedLittleSlaveBoy]

well, I don't keep up on kernel development enough to know all of his problems there, but I would definately think that Cox's deal with Red Hat puts him in a position where he doesn't need to worry about getting a product out....

speaking of Midori, I cut my last post short because I didn't want it to sound like a rant. I still have a problem with Transmeta partnering with AOL and Gateway to deliver the Touch Pad, but allowing Gateway/AOL to totally go against the nature and obligations of the GPL. the GPL isn't hard to follow, and I don't believe Transmeta is blameless in the deal since they are helping to develop the platform.

speaking of Transmeta, what's the deal with them? they came out with a bang, but it seems like they're allowing it to go down the tubes....they're going to be in the same situation as Be Inc. sooner or later, hoping they can save themselves by focusing on the Internet Appliance market.....hehehe, yeah right, I think these guys put too much stock in Ellison's dreams, there is no real appliance market, yet.

[Byte 2.0]

I can't give you any pros or cons, but I am kind of in the same boat as you. I am also wanting to learn Linux. a Few of my friends that are into Linux have suggested to me that I try Suse 7.1 and I am going with there advise since they will be there to help me with it.

[mairving]

The same thing happened to Transmeta that happens to a lot of chip maker wannabe's. They come up with a product that has some performance issues and that Intel will quickly try to squash. I think that it will become a speciality chip. The only two areas that I see it going are in handhelds and I read an article the other day about it being tested in ultradense servers. The cool running of the chip makes closer placement of processors possible. Here is the story.

Byte, welcome back. Why do you need SUSE? What happened to that copy of Mandrake that I sent you?

[WickedLittleSlaveBoy]

that's a brutal markt to try to make a mark in....the embedded market in general has never given X86 any respect. I dunno, they probably better stick to laptops and laptopish type hardware, cause even MS hasn't been able to get a decent foothold in the handheld market...and we know how agressive they are. those RISC chips aren't going anywhere for a while.

the chips have so many possibilities, though. imagine being able to run Mac OS, Windows and Solaris SPARC from the same box. well, I'm sure I'm way over simplifying, but it would be nice if they wouldn't just emulate X86 chips. there's already too much competition in the X86 market.

the server market would be cool, but the servers we're talking about are only low to low-medium end servers and it would be hard to compete with XEON, especially with the features Intel plans to release at some point. not to mention IA64.

[Statica]

I still believe that Transmeta is a good theorotical proposition, especially since it has been amply shown that slapping on a Mobile prefix to an essentially a desktop/server CPU does not give it qualities one looks for in a mobile computing system. But is it one of those ground breaking concepts that is far ahead of its time?

Code morphing also a good theorotical concept.

The last theorotical concept is price, Transmeta can only break the Intel Inside (append appropriate chime) if it can deliver it as was proposed in the beginning .. a $200 or so webpad... so far that is a joke.

But for crying out loud, we havent been able to see any delivered products. Why does Nippon get to try it out and we dont? I've been following Transmeta for a while, and my tie is getting increasingly wet with drool .. http://www.transmetazone.com/products.cfm is good. But unless they have a greater deal of popularity than the suit on the subway carrying a laptop, they are bound to fail.

And maybe failure isnt all that bad, hopefully Linus will stop two timing Linux and get to work. I never liked kernel 2.2.xx (I still like the 2.0.xx wayy better) and the increasing wait for 2.4, and the problems and frequent updates to what was stable led to me work with BSD a lot more than I originally anticipated.