On Sun, May 25, 2003 at 12:20:43AM -0500, Munir Nassar wrote:
> 4. why not SuSE or Mandrake then?  Market penetration , name brand
> recognition. most people heard of SuSE and Mandrake but they know
> redhat (not in the biblical sense)

IIRC, SuSE doesn't allow you to download binaries w/o a subscription.  I
may be completely wrong in that, so don't quote me.  It's been a very
long time since I've tried SuSE.  I simply don't like jumping through
financial hoops to get something that's freely available elsewhere.

I'm not sure about Mandrake.  I've had historical problems trying to
install Mandrake.  I recall trying to help Munir out with installing
Mandrake at one of the older InstallFests.  That has set my impression
of Mandrake as being "unpolished".

However, as far as the most stable, commercial distributions with the
greatest name recognition in the US, I would definitely rate it Red Hat,
SuSE, and Mandrake.  Japan has or had a huge following for TurboLinux.
I'm not sure what the current situation is.

You really can't go wrong with any of those mentioned above.  If you
want Debian with an easier installation, Knoppix is a good candidate, or
maybe PGI installer from Progeny.  Have faith, though.  The
debian-installer project is moving forward quickly.  It's a far more
maintainable, modular, and flexible installation utility than it's
predecessor "boot floppy" installer.

There are Debian sub-projects[1] that focus on different aspects of Linux.
There's a Desktop[2] project, a Medical[3] project, and a Jr[4] project.
And, if you know where to look, you can find most of the bleeding-edge
software backported to latest Stable distribution.  Check out
http://apt-get.org for a list of repositories.

References
==========
1. http://www.debian.org/devel
2. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-desktop
3. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
4. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-jr

-- 
Chad Walstrom <chewie at wookimus.net>           http://www.wookimus.net/
           assert(expired(knowledge)); /* core dump */
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