[NTLUG:Discuss] Giving Up On FEDORA

[Leroy Tennison]

On 01/06/2010 10:39 AM, Greg Edwards wrote:
> Thomas Cameron wrote:
>> On 01/06/2010 08:17 AM, Greg Edwards wrote:
>>> I gave up on RH distributions a long time ago.  I truly appreciate the 
>>> contribution that RH made to the Open Source community in the beginning. 
>>
>> "In the beginning???"  Who do you think today's #1 contributor to X.org
>> is?  How about the #1 commercial contributor Linux kernel?  And glibc
>> and the associated toolchain (gcc and friends)?  It's Red Hat.  Red Hat
>> does more for Linux and Linux distros than any organization on the
>> planet.  I am constantly blown away at how quick folks are to trash talk
>> Red Hat since they're at the top of the heap.  It just amazes me how
>> folks who are obviously ignorant of the facts spew crap like this.
>>
> 
> 
> Thomas,
> 
> Calm down.  I don't think that I trashed RH anywhere in my comments.  I 
> have no problems with RH or their goals as an organization.  In their 
> early days RH had allot to do with putting Linux on the map, so to 
> speak, for non techies.
> 
> As a distro for general users (ie Windows converts) RH is not the best 
> place to go, JMO.  RH is solid, but it's not for the faint of heart.  If 
> you're in the biz then RH has some goodies for you.  If you're not, then 
> I cannot recommend any of their products, the learning curve is just too 
> steep.
> 
> --
> Greg E
> 
> _______________________________________________
> http://www.ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> 

Greg,

I'm a little surprised by your comment "the learning curve is just too
steep".  I'm not sure what you're comparing it to.  If it's [K]ubuntu
then maybe so.  I'm hearing that the latter is the classic dilemma:
Ease of use by hiding the details and doing odd things to accomplish
goals tending toward users never really learning the technology.

I don't know if you've installed Debian or not but, after several years
of working with the major Linux distributions, I find it to be somewhat
more "techy" than Red Hat.  SuSE seems fairly simple up front but once
you look "under the covers" they take a more complex approach than Red
Hat on various things, a couple of examples are their ifcfg files and
iptables approach.  I would steer anyone wanting to learn iptables
toward Red Hat rather than SuSE.  Granted, SuSE has this large commented
file where you can simply change settings (an N to a Y, etc.) to
implement firewall changes.  However, if you look at the script which
processes this file it is truly intimidating.  Not something to learn from.

Red Hat does have a substantial set of manuals you can download to begin
to learn Linux.  They tend to be a little on the "overviewish" side but
for beginners that's probably not a problem.  I must admit I don't know
what other distributions have in the way of downloadable manuals, I
never really bothered after reading Red Hat's.