Re: [Nolug] Elite Nerds Create Linux Distro From Hell

On Monday 08 December 2003 4:09 pm, CMJandHOJ@cs.com wrote:

> I'm just looking to get the most bang for my buck. I can't afford
> to setup a UNIX box at home and I want to learn UNIX and LINUX. I
> figured if I picked a distro most like UNIX it would be easier to
> adapt to either at the lowest cost to me.
>
> Chris

None of the linux distro are really that much like solaris, at least not
superficially. They're much, much easier and nicer to use in general.

I would go with slack or debian, then get your self a cheap sun machine
off ebay (~$300) when you can afford it to learn solaris, or if you
really want solaris off the bat that badly, try out Solaris X86.

Slackware is very "minimally managed", like solaris, and you wind up
compiling and downloading tons of things, like solaris. Slackware is
very "barebones" and you will learn a lot about *linux* in general
using it.

Solaris is painful to use but it is very powerful. You will understand
why people hated unix when you use solaris, unless the admin has taken
the time to make a nice environment for you. It's definitely worth
learning though.

Debian is very "managed" and has binaries precompiled for just about
everything you could want. You will learn more about the distros way
of doing things more than "linux" per se with something like debian.

Redhat (and rpm based distros in general) is somewhere between and has
none the advantages of either slack or debian. The only nice thing
about the rpm based distros is that they work nice "out of the box".

-- 
Tim Kelley
tpk at 23rdward dot org
___________________
Nolug mailing list
nolug@nolug.org