Re: Which Linux distro

["David Lodge" <dave cirt net>]

I did my old problem of not saying enough :-)

On Fri, 17 Mar 2006 12:03:41 -0000, Paul Sladen <gnome-uk paul sladen org>  
wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Mar 2006, David Lodge wrote:
> > 1) Easy package management (a yum alike would be fine)
> I'm told that Debian's 'apt' does a wonderful job at this;  ...such a  
> good job that after about 10years it was copied and called 'yum'.

I've used the SUSE port of apt and liked it - so that's fine.

> > 3) Wireless support
> I'm told that Ubuntu has a policy of "If it doesn't work", that's a bug  
> and people have said various things about Ubuntu's wifi support.

Cool I may give that a try then. My problem is I have a common, old  
wireless card (based on adm8211) - so it's not one one of the big driver  
sets (intel, atheros, orinoco) even though a lot of people have one. I  
know there are drivers out there (I'm on the mailing list), but I'd rather  
not roll my own unless I have to.

> > 4) Sensible file system format
> The FHS might disagree;  '/opt' is a wrong place to put stuff in this day
> and age.  Packages that are installed by the package manager are going  
> to go
> in the correct places in {,/usr}/{s,}bin.  You are of course free to dump
> whatever you want in '/opt'---that's the reason it exists as a legacy  
> hang-
> over, safe in the knowledge that it won't clash with Packaged packages.

The FHS is ambiguous over this. My reason for liking this format is that  
I'm an ex-Unix sys admin so got used to this - putting everything in one  
place is tantamount to disaster and confusion. I also disagree that it's  
legacy - bearing in mind the "put everything in /usr" is the pre-1980  
concept. Another thing to blame BSD for ;-)

I suppose I'll have to go SuSE or just rant about it!

> > 5) No crap packages (e.g. isdn, ppp ad nauseam)
> People in Germany need ISDN to work out of the box;  People with *DSL  
> often
> need PPP and the rest of world wired only with low-grade copper string
> certainly require PPP.

Okay - I can remove them - what I'm trying to get out is that we have no  
situations like:
[dave yggdrasil ~]$ rpm --erase -v cdrecord
error: Failed dependencies:
        cdrecord is needed by (installed) nautilus-cd-burner-2.10.0-2.i386
[dave yggdrasil ~]$ rpm --erase -v cdrecord nautilus-cd-burner
error: Failed dependencies:
        libnautilus-burn.so.1 is needed by (installed)  
gnome-media-2.10.2-4.i386
        nautilus-cd-burner is needed by (installed) nautilus-2.10.0-4.i386

(From my NAS box, running FC4) Why does nautilus depend on cd-burner?  
Surely nautilus should work without cd-burner and just not allow burning  
of CDs.

Also, again from FC4:
[dave yggdrasil share]$ du -sxk * | sort -nr | head -2
184884  locale
138180  doc
[dave yggdrasil share]$ cd locale
[dave yggdrasil locale]$ du -sxk * | sort -nr | head -2
6968    fr
6636    es
[dave yggdrasil locale]$

Now my problem here is, is I'm in great favour of translations, but I'm  
never going to use the French and Spanish translation - and if by shear  
fluke I ever learn the languages I can always download them. So why do I  
need the translations for all packages for all languages installed?

(The reason I'm ranting here is my NAS box has a big problem with /usr  
being a sensible 2G and constantly filling up on patching)

> > I've tried Ubuntu, but it has in built package dependency hell.
> Could you expand on this please.  I think there are people who might be
> inclined to disagree and certainly

I'd show you an example, but my VMWare licence has expiried :-(. The  
problem I found was that I'd try and remove software I don't want (e.g.  
pppd) and I'd have to remove placer packages which would then warn me that  
I'd have problems updating software.

Any thanks for your help - what you guys have told me is that I should  
probably look at the bigger distros, so I'm going to wait for FC5 and the  
latest version of SUSE and maybe Ubuntu and spend some time messing  
around...

dave