I agree.

I've tried several distros over time, and haven't really been totally happy
with any of them.  Part of that might just be newbieism with some aspects
of Linux, but I do think I got a good feel for things loading several
different distros one after another on the same hardware and seeing how
each reacted.  I found it very odd that different distros needed different
drivers and settings to use the same hardware, and even more odd that
autodetection "just worked" and found everything on one of the installs and
didn't work nearly as well on the others.  I liked individual install and
usability features of Corel, Red Hat, SuSe, and Mandrake, but I could never
find one that really had all of the nice points that I liked.  Combining
them would make for a much better (and friendlier) OS, as far as I am
concerned.

Another aspect of this for me is the way the installations can be
customized.  For all I know, I would have been completely happy with the 6
CD's of crap that came with SuSe if I had a better idea of what combination
of things to install, but the docs were awful.  I think this is a case
where too much latitude for the user can be overwhelming.

As a final note, I think that better accommodations should be made for
those of us that are not blessed with bootable CD drives.  None of the
distros (that I have seen) let you use their lovely GUI install if you have
to boot from a floppy.

My two copper coins.  Let me know if I can help you out with this.

Kevin Finch
Network Administrator
DST Systems, Inc.
816/435-6039
krfinch@dstsystems.com

                                                                                                    
                
                    "Brian Densmore"                                                                
                
                    <DensmoreB@ctbsonline.        To:     "KCLUG (E-mail)" <kclug@kclug.org>        
                
                    com>                          cc:                                               
                
                    Sent by:                      Subject:     New distro                           
                
                    owner-kclug@marauder.i                                                          
                
                    lliana.net                                                                      
                
                                                                                                    
                
                                                                                                    
                
                    01/28/2002 11:17 AM                                                             
                
                                                                                                    
                
                                                                                                    
                

Ok. I'll probably get slammed on this one, but here goes.

I've tried a number of distros, but am not entirely happy with any.
I would like to build a new distro, but it would be a major
undertaking. I want to know if anyone else would be interested in
putting together a "drop-n-load" style distro that has:
a nice menu interface,
multiple level install (desktop, gamer, developer, server, office),
has capability of custom compiling sources to optimize for a pc,
uses generic rpms,
is Redhat compatible,
is standards compliant.

I would post this distro on my box (even if it means I have to upgrade
the server and pay for the potential extra bandwidth)

Mandrake builds a great interface, but they have also made major
modifications to the structure of the OS. When I tried to upgrade to
the next level of KDE, I discovered there is NO path other than
installing all of the 8.1 code. same thing with rpm. Can't upgrade
rpm without installing all of the 8.1 codebase first.
(Or at least so much that the difference is minimal. At least that is
 my experience)
And (grrrr) I had to download and compile iptables after upgrading the
kernel. Because Mandrake uses a "custom" iptables build.

Brian Densmore
Associate
mailto:densmoreb@ctbsonline.com
CompuTech Business Solutions, Inc.
http://www.ctbsonline.com/
(816) 880-0988 x215