Re: [Rule-list] Red Hat No Longer Supports 486

[Martin Stricker]

Liam Proven wrote:

> I strongly recommend you to take a look at some other distros and see
> just how very far behind the times RH is, though.

You are right here. This has been a complaint of mine for quite a while.

> I started with Red Hat, too, when I wrote my Linux Masterclass
> article for PC Pro - it's on my homepage. Takes a novice from "what
> is Linux?" to building a complete small business server. I'm rather
> proud of it. RH was a good server distro and still isn't too bad, but
> it's a very weak desktop.

Again you are right. But I don't care much about the desktop, I'm
interested in the server. I rarely install X even on my desktop... And
from my point of view Red Hat Linux still is the best server distro. For
a desktop I would recommend Mandrake. Debian has the better package
manager (but apt has weaknesses itself), but needs more
user-friendlyness (same goes for Red Hat) and needs Red Hat's urge for
stability. S.u.S.E. is just a mess (and goes much into BSD instead of
using a sane System V init). Sadly, the redhat-config-* tools are going
into exactly the same messy direction, even worse: only X!. So I'm using
webmin, not the best code itself... If IBM would just port smitty to
Linux! Of course, this is just my opinion and solely based on my needs -
I just need a working system, not the "latest and greatest". That is
reserved for my playing box - for which I haven't had time for several
months now...

> > Furthermore, you will find precompiled RPMs for Red Hat Linux for
> > nearly any software, which is especially important when dealing
> > with proprietary software. Thus it's a good idea to have a Red Hat
> > Linux compatible system.
> 
> Up to a point. The world doesn't revolve around RH, though.

I'm sorry if I sounded that way. It's just that Red Hat Linux is the
distro for which you will most likely find precompiled binaries. Next is
S.u.S.E., but I won't touch that. At work I'm forced to administrate a
S.u.S.E. 7.0 server, and that's *not* fun. For me, at least.

> > Well, this *could* be circumvented by 1) using apt-rpm as found on
> > http://freshrpms.net/ and 2) placing RULE mirrors instead of the
> > Debian ones into /etc/apt/sources.list. Again, I don't think it's
> > worth the effort.
> 
> I think you're wrong. I think it's an absolutely brilliant idea and
> would be a HUGE help. Without a dependancies database, RPM is badly
> broken.

You are right about RPM. I would like Red Hat Linux to switch over to
apt. I'm still not convinced that Debian is worth the effort, but if you
think, well, let's do it and find out who's right! ;-))) (The answer
will be: no one, because opinions and needs differ.)

> > My proposal, if Red Hat decides to switch to i586 packages,
> > is to recompile the whole distro for i386 and make it available for
> > download. Of course, this might not be worth the effort as well...
> ;-))
> 
> I think it's the only way to go.

I fear so. I would prefer that Red Hat would take a slightly different
direction, but I guess money rules... :-((

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against RULE projects with different
distributions. Well, to be honest, only as long as I get my RULE Red Hat
Linux... ;=D Red Hat Linux 8.0 has shown that we might soon no longer be
able to proceed the current way RULE is built, so we need to find a new
way. Mine will be recompiling Red Hat Linux for i386, but there are
other ways, so why not explore them? I might be interested in the Debian
way, but I'm definitely not interested in Slackware.

So my question at all of us is: Do we want to find one way to proceed
with RULE, or could we split up our efforts into several distros
*without* those nasty distro wars? Opinions and needs are different. If
we proceed carefully I'm positive that the different subprojects will be
able to help each other.

P.S.: Liam, could you please check your time and timezone settings? Your
mail claims to be written yesterday... ;-))

Best regards,
Martin Stricker
-- 
Homepage: http://www.martin-stricker.de/
Linux Migration Project: http://www.linux-migration.org/
Red Hat Linux 7.3 for low memory: http://www.rule-project.org/
Registered Linux user #210635: http://counter.li.org/