Re: Which Linux distro

[James Ogley <james usr-local-bin org>]

Hi,

I'd recommend SUSE 10.x (10.0 now, or wait a short while, and go for
10.1 [or upgrade when it comes out]).

> 1) Easy package management (a yum alike would be fine)

Smart is available for SUSE, and kicks yum's butt.  It can access all
sorts of repositories: YaST; APT; YUM etc etc and like APT has either a
CLI or GUI frontend.

> 2) Minimal dependency hell

Again, Smart is the daddy here.  Since I've started using it, it's yet
to bite me in the behind on deps.

> 3) Wireless support (I don't want to have to compile the drivers every  
> time I upgrade the kernel)

Kerching!

> 4) Sensible file system format (Gnome is not part of the OS and belongs in  
> /opt not /usr godsdammit!)

Well, as has been observed, you can tell you've used SUSE before, so if
you like the way they structure things, stick with it ;)

> I'm an old  
> SuSE user but really hate YaST and I haven't tried it since Novell bought  
> the company?

As I said, for package management you don't need to use YaST, and for
most of the other things it does, you can edit /etc/sysconfig files
directly (or use gnome-system-tools for some).

And the spelling of the name's changed, it is now SUSE not SuSE.  Took
me a while to get used to it too.
-- 
James Ogley james usr-local-bin org
Packages for SUSE: http://usr-local-bin.org/rpms
Make Poverty History: http://makepovertyhistory.org