Re: Opinion Sought

[Andreas Klemm <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Jan 13, 2002 at 07:41:13PM +0000, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> John,
> 
>         If you are a newcomer to Linux, Slackware is NOT the distribution 
> you should be running!

I used many Slackware releases in the past up to 3.x. During that
time I fiddled around with Linux. Some error reports around printing
let me doubt, that Slackware is something for a beginning user.
In the past it offered many more up to date packages than SLS,
which was one of the first Distributions ...
But now I would choose something different.

> Debian is the most advanced and versatile 
> Debian/GNU distribution, while RedHat is the most popular.  Mandrake is 
> also in the running, but tends to be quirky, obviously not having the 
> quality control of RedHat, much less that of Debian.

Debian people are known to work very precise.
The only thing that I disliked is, that they also have no
basic Unix and add on applications.

Over the years I found a strategy to become familiar with a Unix
system, by browsing through all the files under /etc. This gave
me a quick overview, how this Unix is to administrate, what
startup scripts it offers, how the philosophy of system management
is ...

Well Debian puts all config files under /etc. Not only the system files,
what would be very beneficial, but also the config files of every
package that you install. At the end /etc was very "polluted" and
I completely lost the overview, what belongs to the system and what
not.

This annoyed me and I lost interest in evaluating it any further.

Too bad that there is no Linux Basis system, where everybody
could agree upon. At least it would be sufficient, if every
Distribution maker would at least form something, that pretty
looks like an unpolluted basic Unix system, that undergoes
strong auditing of sources to get a real mature and stable/reliable
and secure system.

This I'm missing most in *all* Linux distributions.

From a security / administration point of view I think this is
not very beneficial (to say it carefully) ...

> ... Mandrake installs by default the CUPS ("common Linux printing 
> system," which appears to be the system to which most Linux 
> distributions will ultimately switch.  Debian defaults to 
> the old LPR system, but provides both LPRng and CUPS.

> [...]  My recommendation to you is that you switch to Debian and 
> CUPS.  CUPS has its own, integral magic filer; thus, with CUPS you will 
> have no need of apsfilter.  Being a relatively new development, CUPS 
> recently has undergone several revisions; for this reason, I recommend that 
> you install the testing distribution of Debian ("Woody"), which is quite 
> stable, and which ships with CUPS 1.1.12.  Debian maintains three 
> distributions:  stable ("Potato"), testing ("Woody"), and unstable ("Sid"); 
> when Woody is declared stable, Sid will become the testing distribution.

Russel, could you please tell me, what benefits you see in CUPS ?
The last time I saw it I noticed a Web based printer installation
but not many more. How is the flexibility for the user, if he
wants to preview printouts or if he wants to change some print
parameters ? Does CUPS have any mechanisms like apsfilter printing
options ? Or pseudo / real Duplex printing ?
Half a year ago I didn't find any interesting stuff that justifies
to say apsfilter goodby ;-) Another thing is, that they hack an
older gs version 5.x. We are now at 6.x/7.x (GNU, AFPL Copyright).

Would be interested to learn from you, what real advantages CUPS
has over apsfilter.

My recommendation for John would be to try Linux RedHat, Debian
Linux with apsfilter and gs 7.0.
Another options to enlarge the horizon would be to install FreeBSD
which is Unix in the original terms of "being a Unix".
Excellent fast/reliable/secure and _mature_ base system.
>6000 ports in the ports collection. Best 3rd party management.
Best migration support over source (using cvsup, mergemaster
and port management utilities). Linux Binary compatibility.
Yes I think it worth a try.


	Andreas ///

-- 
Andreas Klemm
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