Seven Percent

[Mark Haney]

Andy Green wrote:
> Ubuntu:
Yeah it's fine.  I simply do not like the GNOME interface.  Not anymore 
at any rate. 
>
> After this, we come to what I think of as the first surprise in our 
> survey. Gentoo took fourth place with a total of 9.6 percent. Gentoo, 
> to me, is a Linux expert's Linux. I know many serious Linux users who 
> work with Gentoo to better understand Linux, but almost no one who 
> uses it as their first choice for day-to-day work.
I love Gentoo.  It used to be the 'expert's linux', but I don't see that 
as the case now.  The new installer is is pretty good and they do not 
advocate a stage 1 install anymore either as it doesn't give the 
performance boost compared to the work involved.  That said, my kids 
laptop's and my Mom's desktop all run Gentoo and they can handle their 
systems just fine. My youngest is 7, BTW, and she can emerge packages 
pretty well.  I personally find having the packages installed in their 
default locations (at least according to the manual), makes life easier 
on me.  Plus I've found the performance boost of not having packages 
compiled for every possibility (within reason) to be worth the time of 
compiling.
>
> In fifth place, we find Fedora, Red Hat's community distribution. 
> Fedora, while still somewhat popular with 7 percent of the vote, seems 
> to have lost some of its charm to users in the last year.
> ...''
I don't see that it's lost it's charm, IMHO.  I have 13 other servers at 
home running FC3/4/5 and all my systems here at work (barring my laptop) 
are all FC other than my SGI systems.  I much prefer FC over Debian 
across the board.  Debian package management has always been a PITA, 
whereas yum and RPM's 'just work'.  However, I do see two weaknesses in 
FC.  A lack of a LiveCD ( I use these more and more to promote linux use 
in my family) and the fact that it's 5 CD's or a DVD to install.  Sure 
Ubuntu has a DVD version, but a good standard install is still only one 
CD the rest you can apt-get.  I've never managed to get a good base 
install from one FC CD.  The fact I need to insert CD 3 for one package 
is a pet peeve of mine, but one I can live with as long as I have 
broadband where I can ftp install from a mirror.

All that being said.  FC is still the best linux version for general 
desktop use for people who want the 'latest and greatest'.  Ubuntu is 
always slightly behind on that for stability's sake.

Just my $0.02

-- 
Ceterum censeo, Carthago delenda est.

Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator
ERC Broadband
(828) 350-2415