Distributions

[Mike Coleman]

Jonathan <hutchins at opus1.com> writes:
> RedHat: NOT the original distribution, but probably the first commercial
> distribution.

There's various ways to define commercial, but I think SLS, which I'm pretty
sure was earlier than RedHat, was sold on floppies to a limited degree.

> Uses RedHat Package Manager (RPM) to provide "dependency checking" and avoid
> compiling everything from source.

Do RPMs include dependency information now?  I heard they were going to for a
long time, but I never quite noticed whether it's happened.

> DebIan: Named after Deborah and Ian somebody, who put it together in their
> kitchen.  Ian is now making a ridiculous amount of money evolving the
> Corporate distribution.

He works for Progeny on Debian, but I hadn't heard that he was making major
bucks.

-- 
Mike Coleman, mkc at mathdogs.com
  http://www.mathdogs.com -- problem solving, expert software development