Re: tlug: Distribution War!!!

["Marc E. Christensen" <marc@example.com>]

I believe you need to try all distributions you can and decide for
yourself.  I and most familiar with Redhat and OpenLinux and debian.  I
have worked with both quite a bit.  I have also used TurboLinux 4.0J (I
like it quite a bit..... 

However, I am most familiar with Caldera (for obvious reasons...8^)

Caldera allows for choice of individual packages just like the rest.  It
also allows for any partitioning scheme.  Having used several
distributions and even before my employment at Caldera, I feel that
Caldera has the smoothest, most well thought out distribution.  I really
feel that they have put much needed engineering into their product in such
a way that it does not distract from Linux itself.  Their admin tools
allow for direct editing of the config files for programs so people can
use either way of administering their box.  They take the time to make
sure that applications are well integrated into the menu systems in KDE.
The more I looked at the way things are set up the more I felt they have
"done it right".  They didn't take away from my freedom as a hacker.

I think they have lost some of the "hacker community" mainly because
their marketing has not been focussed there, certainly not due to their
quality.

This was my opinion before I started working at Caldera.  

Now, having a chance to get to know the other engineers there, I am
certainly impressed.  The other engineers are more concerned than the
public realizes about keeping the distribution pure-linux under the hood
for anyone who wants to get their hands dirty.  The efforts to provide
tools that do not bind the user into certain methods of admin or config
tools which are file format sensitive (beyond their usual syntax)  is
quite large.  Making sure all the tools that should be there are, etc.  I
admire the work done on Lizard and the resulting ease of installation - a
quality required by the masses.  Any company is market driven.  I feel that
Caldera has done an excellent job at balancing the need for flash and the
necessity for utility.  Every engineer at Caldera is a hard core Linux
user (even the ones they've recently been sucking away from Novell 8^).

In the end, of course, you need to test out some distritributions and see
which one you like.  Good luck! 

On Tue, 16 Nov 1999, Marcos Campos wrote:

[snip]
> Caldera is extremelly easy to install and all the packages installed appear 
> automatic in the menu of KDE, making things really easy (and also including 
> StarOffice and WordPerfect). But it's too much automatic and I cannot make 
> any choice about partition and select the packages that I would like to 
> install... That's bad enough to risk it out of my list. I installed it once 
> but return to Redhat quickly later.

--
Marc Christensen
marc@example.com
http://www.calderasystems.com

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