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what distribution you use of linux?

 
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I use Mandrake in my home and just started Red Hat in my office.
What distribution you use and which one you like to use and why?
Another KDE or GNOME which desktop you prefer and why?
 
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This question is probably better suited to the Linux forum. I'll move it there.
Incidentally, for the record, I also use Mandrake 8.0 because it was easy to install as a second OS on my home box. I prefer KDE to Gnome because I think KDE has superior tools.
 
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What a question. I started out with Mandrake 6.1. That's when it was packaged with Red Hat. Eventually I migrated to Mandrake 7.1. Then I gave Red Hat a try (7.2 I think). I hated Red Hat simply because they changed some of the core libraries to suit their needs. Which is why you see Red Hat Binaries all over the place and then source code for other Distro's along with them for people who don't use Red Hat.
I then went to Mandrake 8.0 and eventually 8.1. I was really happy with both of these Releases. But I had always wanted to give SUSE a try, however, they stopped giving away their Distro for free. But, I found someone who had 7.3 and installed it. Needless to say, I have been using it ever since. Very nice Install, very nice Admin tools. Good Hardware detection.
As far as Desktops, It depends. If I am doing straight development, I use BlackBox because there is less GUI to slow me down. However, for all other uses, I use Gnome.
 
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Well, I have several systems here, and several more I have installed for clients. My favourite at the moment is probably e-smith ( http://www.e-smith.org/ ) which offers a well-designed and extendable small-business server. Smoothwall ( http://www.smoothwall.org/ ) is also a good, solid firewall distribution, although it doesn't install well direct from CD. I've used Tomsrtbt and DLX for floppy-based distributions provided you have at least a 486DX CPU. It's getting increasingly hard to find a distribution which runs on a 486SX or 386, but there are a few left out there.
I very rarely use a GUI on linux, so I don't really have an opinion on which window manager to choose. The only box I do have a GUI configured on at the moment happens to be Red Hat 7.2 with KDE, but not for any particular reason. I have a couple of non-GUI Red Hat 7.1 boxes, and used to have a couple of SuSE installations too, before I sold the parts.
 
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Presumably you're not doing any java on those 386 and 486's?
 
Frank Carver
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Not very much, although I have installed a JVM on one of the old dusty 486sx boxes I have, with the intention of using it as a Java-programmable home timer system. The trick is getting the floating-point emulation to work (even though I don't need floating point for this application )
 
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I recently did my first install, using RedHat 6.2 on an old 166MMX and was shocked (and pleased) at how easy the process was, even as a dual boot.
The machine is again a M$ machine for my sister but I'm looking forward to sourcing some low spec machines to build my own Linux farm.
 
Frank Carver
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Yup, Linux install is pretty easy on any pentium or pentium class machine. 486DX machines are pretty easy too, as long as you don't choose one of the pentium-optimized distributions. 386 and 486SX didn't come with a built-in floating-point processor, and the majority of Linux distros these days don't include the kernel code to emulate the missing FPU.
Typically old machines have small RAM and disk sizes, too, so a lot of the modern "include the kitchen sink just in case" distros don't fit.
I agree it's a great feeling, though, to get an old machine which has been consigned to the trash, and install a perfectly workable Linux-based system on it. And it's incredible what even a really old 25MHz CPU is capable of if you don't load it down with a big GUI interface.
 
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Originally posted by Frank Carver:
... 486sx boxes I have, with the intention of using it as a Java-programmable home timer system. The trick ....


Frank, are you writing the app? If so, could it be done with BigDecimal and some glue code to put the float data on the timer wire?
Just a thought.....
G.
Woops! Unintentional hijack.
G.
[ May 07, 2002: Message edited by: Guy Allard ]
 
Ashik Uzzaman
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I am currently using Mandrake 8.0, but i think Red Hat and Slackware is more reliable for business organizations. But when i was installing Red Hat in my office, it could not find out my AGP card, and i was lost....
At last, my guru Asif bhai some hiow managed to solve it!
 
Frank Carver
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Frank, are you writing the app? If so, could it be done with BigDecimal and some glue code to put the float data on the timer wire?.
It's actually much simpler than that. The timer system doesn't use floating point at all, but to install and use the "Standard" edition of Java requires floating point whether you use it or not. I'm not really ready to consider J2ME, so the only option is to make sure that the OS supports floating point, either by hardware or by emulation.
The problem with using old hardware for this sort of application is that almost all Linux distributions assume that you are running at least a 486DX, so they don't include floating-point emulation in their initial kernel. SO I have to either find a distro which does include floating point emulation in the default kernel, or compile up a kernel on a different machine and essentially build my own distribution!
 
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Hi,
Im currently using SuSE 7.3 Professional. I quite like SuSE, I'll probably buy 8.1 when it comes out as opposed to 8.0 (8.1 should by that time have good stable releases of KDE 3.0 and Gnome 2.0, as well as Mozilla 1.0, not that they arent stable already :-) ).
Cheers,
Mark
 
Frank Carver
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Ashik uzzaman wrote I am currently using Mandrake 8.0, but i think Red Hat and Slackware is more reliable for business organizations.
I'm very interested in this. What features in particular do you think make Red Hat and Slackware more appropriate than Mandrake?
I realize that Red Hat is the perceived "market leader", but I'm quite surprised at your mention of Slackware rather than SuSE. I haven't seen a Slackware installation in a long time.
 
Mark Fletcher
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Hi,
Forgot to add, I use KDE over Gnome... I tried compared the default versions of both that come with SuSE7.3; Gnome 1.4 with Nautilus 1.0.2 and KDE 2.2.1. And I found KDE to be a much better experience.
However Im hoping that Gnome 2.0 will even the odds.
Cheers,
Mark
 
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About 5 years back I would use slackware over all other distributions, more recently saw what mandrake in v6 or thereabouts were doing and liked that, so used that for a while, but now I'm using red hat just because IMO it got to be the best workstation distribution. Also use smoothwall for my firewall distribution. At one point I tried e-smith for a firewall/server/etc but had problems with the setup, although it does look like a nice distribution.

Originally posted by Frank Carver:
Smoothwall ( http://www.smoothwall.org/ ) is also a good, solid firewall distribution, although it doesn't install well direct from CD...


I'm surprised, I've never had a problem with doing the smoothwall installation direct from CD. What were the problems that you found with the install?
 
Frank Carver
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George Brown wrote: I've never had a problem with doing the smoothwall installation direct from CD. What were the problems that you found with the install?
I tried to install it on a couple of different machines, with at least three attempts at burning a boot CD, and each time it would start to boot but get hung up (at various different places in the boot process). For example, even though booting from CD, it would thrash at the floppy drive as if looking for something.
I got slightly further producing a boot floppy from the supplied images on the CD, but then it had trouble recognizing the rest of the installation on CD. And this is on machines where e-smith, Red Hat, SuSE, Windows(!) etc booted and installed fine.
Another chap eventually got Smoothwall installed on one of these boxes using the boot floppy approach, but I don't know quite what magic he did that I didn't.
 
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Very interesting topic...
I thing KDE looks better for desktop .. reason .. don't know why...
 
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