[NTLUG:Discuss] Giving Up On FEDORA

[rhia]

Ok, maybe I'm still far more into tech than I thought I was, considering
I left tech a half decade ago, but I find Gentoo surprisingly easy. In
fact, I much prefer it over the new "friendly" "end user" distros like
Ubuntu. 
Portage, pick app, emerge - just works. Even keeping it up to date is a
simple one line command.  Yes, the initial build is a bugbear, but if
we're talking pre-built systems....

Then again, although I made my living on MS for over a decade, I cut my
open source teeth on early slackware and the BSDs.

All in all, tho, even my 75 yr old mom can pick an application and do an
emerge. 

It's more in how the distribution is approached and in how the steps are
explained. I find it easier to give a 15 line text document on the
desktop to give everything needed to keep a gentoo install running and
up to date much easier than trying to explain and document the "end user
ease of use"' gui hoops and pages of detailed instructions that some
other distros make END USERS go through.

Then again, that's just my experience.

rhia



On Wed, 2010-01-06 at 22:38 -0600, Leroy Tennison wrote:
> 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.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> http://www.ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>