[NTLUG:Discuss] Laptops and Distributions

[Christopher Browne]

On Thu, 12 Oct 2000 19:49:04 CDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
Steve Baker <sjbaker1 at airmail.net>  said:
> Randall Gibson wrote:
> > 
> > Hehe, I went through 2 days of AGONY to get Debian installed on my Laptop
> > here, even though SuSE did it all in no time flat. Just because SuSE is
> > based on Red-Hat.
> 
> I don't think SuSE is based from RedHat - you are probably thinking of
> Mandrake.

... And there are much _larger_ issues than the package management tool.

> > If they could get rpm's to be as easy to work with as
> > deb's I wouldnt bother, but you only install once, you have to be able to
> > maintain it for a LONG time.
> 
> SuSE seem to manage that - although they ARE based around RPM's.

If you look carefully, SuSE seems to "betray" some ancient connections
to Slackware; its genesis seems to have been as a German making of
a distribution originally based on Slackware, augmented with Package
Management By Caldera.  [The "R" in "RPM" might lead one to believe
that it was sponsored by Red Hat, when it was more like that Caldera
sponsored its creation...]

Historically, it has almost _always_ been the case that some distributions
would be vastly more difficult to install on laptops than others.
Which is hardest to cope with tends to change about every six months,
which is roughly the hardware cycle during which fresh new generations
video chipsets, BIOSes, and other bits of ancilliary hardware come along.

Personally, my inclination is to refuse to suggest a preference for
"laptop distribution" due to this problem.

In another few months, laptops are liable to interface everything via USB,
which will likely lead to the Best Laptop Distribution being whichever
one has the latest Linux 2.4.x kernel images...
--
cbbrowne at ntlug.org - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/>
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