[PLUG] "Gender" issues

[Seth Heckard]

Charles Allen wrote:
>    I was wondering if you guys could inform me of the strengths and 
> weaknesses of the major distributions.  I am sinserely curious about 
> them.  I curretnly use RH7.1 and I wonder if there's a distro out there 
> more suited to my ability level and needs.  Is there a site that takes a 
> third party view at the different distros?

Every once in a while a distro review will pop up on Slashdot or
one of the other Linux news sites.  However, in my experience
they are all fairly weak reviews that really don't tell you
anything.  For example, every review I've read focuses on the
installer.  I could care less about how pretty it is as long as
it works, because you only install something once.

My advice, play around with several of them.  If you have some
unused space on your hard disk, repartition it and install a
distro.  Play around with it for a week, then try another one.
After about a month, you should have a good idea of what works
well for you and what you hate.

If you know how to recompile a kernel and make packages, you
can make any distribution into about anything you want.  One
doesn't really have to be limited by what is given.

Of course, once you try Debian, you won't want to use anything
else :-)

Seth Heckard / sdh@purdue.edu