Distro choices
Anyone who has really spent time talking to me about computers knows that I collect data like the end of the world is coming. One of the things I collect is various operating systems and the different versions. I do it for a couple reasons, A. I am on dialup, but even when I get back on high speed I will still collect them. B. I enjoy learning as much as I can about as many things so that when a situation arises that I need to do something with that application or operating system I don’t waste time looking for a feature or setting. C. I am looking for a good linux desktop.
If you have learned that I collect a lot then you also know I am a Slackware lover so the last reason may seem a little strange to some. I love Slackware and always will, it was the first distribution I ever tried and always the one I go back to. I do have trouble deciding between Slackware and other distributions. I don’t even know why really, because package management is available in Slackware and RHEL based distributions along with Debian and so on. I used to have a lot to say about Red Hat despite knowing jack about anything they did. Most of my opinions were based on things I heard or the opinions of others. It was unfair to make judgments about Red Hat having never really used it or understanding their way of doing things, but it happened and I have at least been willing to learn more about Red Hat.
For the past few months I have had to work in Red Hat based environments (CentOS, RHEL) and I have enjoyed them very much. I am still a supporter of compiling software, but packages with dependency checking can be a huge help in a number of different scenarios. Compiling from source is fun, and you learn something every time you do it, but when you have a number of servers to update a `yum update` is a much more efficient way of keeping your environment up to date.
This last weekend I downloaded PCLinuxOS, Fedora 7, and OpenBSD. PCLinuxOS has a slogan, “The distro shopper stopper”, well I was not nearly as excited about PCLinuxOS as I was about Fedora. I installed Fedora in a virtual machine and without any involvement on my part the mouse would work between Windows and Fedora without having to escape the virtual machine. I assume Fedora ships with the tools to allow this and enables them based on the hardware it finds. There were just a number of small things that made Fedora enjoyable to work with. Other than Slackware, my use of Fedora was the best experience I have had with a Linux distro in a long time. Actually, that isn’t totally true, I really like SLAX and BackTrack, but they are Slackware based. CentOS was cool, but for a desktop environment Fedora is #2, with Slackware remaining at #1.
I installed OpenBSD this morning and spent a few minutes moving around. My goal was really to just get it installed to the point that I understand the process and feel confident doing that without a guide so that in the future I can spend a little more time with the system itself. The installation process was definitely different from anything I have ever done before. It was similar in many ways to installs involving fdisk, but I encountered processes I had never seen before. I have wanted to use OpenBSD for about 5 years, but never installed it until this morning; who know’s why I waited so long.
