Re: Distribution comparison [was: X terminals help...]

[Al Hudson <nospam [at] york.ac.uk>]

On Mon, 6 Dec 1999, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> Then why didn't you start by answering why you are a Mandrake addict?

Sorry, I was being a bit vague wasn't I . . . I have to say, I didn't
realise how wholly a 'Mandrake-head' I'd been labelled until I went to
Demo Week. Hi, I'm Alex. Alex? The Mandrake fan? (etc). The whole
reason I've got Mandrake on my machines was because it was the most
up-to-date distro I had to hand...

> So what do you like about Mandrake?

To be honest, I don't really have a thorough pro/cons of why I use
Mandrake. The distro Mandrake was installed over was Redhat 5.9, and
basically I still use it because it worked first time, it keeps working
and does everything I want it to. One thing I don't like about Mandrake:
it's i586 optimised, so I can't put it on any of my 486's, which generally
means I either download two rpms (the mdk and rh) or run unoptimised
software on the Mandrake machines. Generally, it's the latter - I
personally don't notice the difference.

> To respond to some of Al's points (valid - the point here is not a
> rebuttal but to show what I think Debian is good for).

I'll just say again: I didn't mean what I said to be some sort of complete
critique of Debian. I have recommended Debian to people in the past, and
will continue to do so. At the moment, there's really only one distro that
I recommend against people using, and I'm sure people can guess which one
I'm talking about...

btw, for my sins I picked up a copy of Debian this weekend, I'll give it
another go in a few weeks. You never know, I might change my mind, but
then, nobody should care what I think anyway, it's choice, innit? ;)

Cheers,

Alex.

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