Conversion to Linux

[Billy Crook]

Michael,

Be careful. All of the options include hundreds if not thousands of
distributions.  I'd stick to evaluating the major ones if I were you.
The three major ancestries of GNU+Linux are RedHat, Debian, and
Slackware.

You shouldn't get too hung up on distros.  GNU+Linux is GNU+Linux.  If
a program works in one distro, and you can get sources, you can
usually make it work in any distro with a little time and patience.
The differences you should get a feel for are how configuration is
managed, how good support is on the net or on the phone, how software
installation is managed, and documentation.

------------

Slackware is more of a hobbyiest OS, and while it works fine, its not
something I'd imagine seeing in many enterprise arenas because package
management is so important today, and Slackware's package management
system is, well, eccentric.  Slackware is published by a man named
Patrick Volkerding.  Slackware is Free Software, and gratis (available
at no charge).

SuSE (SLED and SLES) is the largest modern embodiment of the Slackware
branch today.  It is published by Novell.  While it is Free Software,
it is not gratis (you have to pay money for it, and you get support).
If you want SuSE to demo, you can get OpenSUSE, which Novell does make
available gratis (free of charge).  Make sure you experience it's
configuration program yast.  It is central to administration in SuSE.

Download Slackware at: http://www.slackware.com/getslack/
Download OpenSUSE at: http://software.opensuse.org/

------------

Debian is focused more on developer community and organization, than
commerce, but that's not to say it won't work in a datacenter or on
your desk.  I work with someone who uses Debian every day, and he
seems to tolerate it well.  There's no single official company you'd
buy Debian from and get support.  Debian is Free Software and gratis
(you can download it without paying).

Ubuntu is derived from Debian, and published by Canonical.  Ubuntu is
Free Software, and gratis.  Canonical officially sells support, but I
don't know anyone who buys it though.  Ubuntu is more focused on user
community, and "usability".  I only put that in quotes, because its
not like they're the only people who want the computer to be usable.
Everyone does.  Ubuntu just tends to put simple user experience more
above other concerns than do other distributions.

Download Debian at: http://www.debian.org/distrib/
Download Ubuntu at: http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download

------------

RedHat was the first major distribution to be commercially sold.  It
was also avaliable at no charge originally.  It was published by
RedHat Inc.  Today there is not a distro called RedHat.  It's been
split in to RHEL, and Fedora.  RHEL is the "enterprisey", supported,
and for-pay distro, and Fedora is the community project.  RHEL
intentionally excludes new software and advances so that by the time
something gets included in RHEL it's not a gimmik, and it's time
tested in addition to being validated by a number of vendors.  RHEL
does not change often.  In general, when you see "Supports Linux" on a
physical product, in a manual, or on a spec sheet, they're referring
to RHEL.  RHEL is Free Software, but is not gratis.  You have to pay
for it, and you get official support.  RHEL is supported for extremely
long.  If you install RHEL on a server, the hardware will very likely
become obsolete before support ends.  It's not fancy.  It's for the
long haul.

Fedora is published by RedHat, and developed and controlled by a mix
of RedHat employees, and external community.  It is Free Software, and
gratis.  Fedora strives to include all the latest technologies and
software.  It also has a strong focus on only officially supporting
Free Software.  Things like DVDs, MP3's, and proprietary drivers are
intentionally excluded from inclusion in official Fedora releases
because those technologies are encumbered by restrictive patents or
licenses.  Fedora is released often (every 6 months), and "supported"
for a relatively short period of time (eleven months from the initial
release date).  Fedora often retires technologies that didn't get used
much or weren't as useful as originally hoped, and each release is an
opportunity to make sweeping changes.

CentOS is a gratis recompile of RHEL.  RedHat chooses to make their
sourcecode available to download gratis even though they don't make
RHEL itself available gratis.  The CentOS development team literally
just download the RHEL sourcecode, replace all redhat copyrighted or
trademarked images and strings, and recompile.  It is 100% compatible
with anything that works on RHEL, and basically IS RHEL, unless you're
asking for support.  When you're googling for something about CentOS,
you can usually substitute "rhel", and get a result in some of RedHat
Inc's excellent documentation, which they make available free of
charge.

Sign up for a RHEL trial at:
https://www.redhat.com/apps/webform.html?event_type=simple_form&eid=871
Download Fedora at: http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora
Download Centos at: http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/isos/

------------

I run Fedora Rawhide on my laptop at the moment, which is a nightly
build of the very latest from Fedora.  It is in effect the pre-alpha
testbed of what will become the next Fedora release.  I expect a few
quirks, but there's not been anything I couldn't work through so far.
If you come to a meeting, I'd be glad to show you how it works.

If the "Free Software not being free of charge" thing is confusing,
understand the Free means Freedom, and is in no way related to
monetary cost.  It means people who receive the program or OS are
entitled to its source code, and several rights regarding that.  See
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

You might wish to refer to this distro timeline to get a feel for
what's related to what: http://futurist.se/gldt/gldt76.png

-Billy

On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 03:23, Haworth, Michael A.
<Michael_Haworth at pas-technologies.com> wrote:
> At this point in the inning, Ubuntu is the first known option. As part of my
> job, I would be in extreme error if I didn't look at all of the options.
> Looks like my weekend will involve downloading SuSE and Redhat enterprise
> versions :)