[linux] The great OS debate

[Travis Saling]

>The fact that RedHat just dumps a bunch of unnecessary services right when
>you install it makes it a nightmare to secure after you first install it.
>  
>
This stopped prior to Red Hat 7 (the first one I ever tried). I have heard 6.0 and earlier were following the MS model a bit too closely... :-P

I gotta say - nothing like a "what's the best distro" question to generate a lot of mail eh? I've tended to lean towards RH simply because when I first was trying it out (7.0/7.1) some of my friends were trying other distros like Mandrake and Slack. RH was the only one that handled the X configuration without any hiccups on the varied hardware we all had. RH/Fedora's installs should certainly be painless even for a newbie. Dual-booting a desktop machine does require some extra work though (unlike with Mandrake and SuSE, which others have already pointed out). Of course this whole thread started with a server question, and who dual-boots a server anyway!

I'm afraid that I must admit, though, that I'm typing this on a Powerbook. OS X, especially with fink, is now my "Linux" of choice. :-D 

-- 
Travis Saling
Webmaster, UW Electrical Engineering
trav at u.washington.edu / webmaster at ee.washington.edu
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