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Re: [TCLUG:6525] redhat vs mandrake



On Wed, 16 Jun 1999 schewe@tcfreenet.org wrote:

> On 16 Jun, Tim Wilson wrote:
> > I've just installed Mandrake 6.0. I've also got a couple machines running
> > RedHat 6.0. Actually, I'm feeling a little like a software reviewer. In
> > the past month I've installed RH 6.0, Mandrake 6.0, Caldera 2.2, and SuSE
> > 6.1.
> > 
> What did you think of SuSE 6.1 and Caldera 2.2?  

Quick impressions:

Caldera 2.2
===========
Very cool GUI install program. This distro is very simple to install for a
Windows user because the official version includes a Caldera edition of
Partition Magic. It also includes WP8 and StarOffice. However, I didn't
really like it. <flamebait>I kind of like linuxconf for certain
things.</flambebait> Caldera's COAS program for graphically managing your
system is really bad. It isn't complete and doesn't seem to work very
well.

If someone were to try to install Linux for the first time with no outside
help, I might recommend it. OTOH, many people install other distros by
themselves for the first time (I did).

SuSE 6.1
========
In a word, enormous. Five CDs make SuSE very complete. It's the only
distro that has required me to change CDs during installation. There's not
much that isn't on those CDs. It also includes StarOffice (maybe
WP8?). Their system configuration tool, YaST, is much better than COAS.
 The manual is decent, but suffers a bit from the
translation from German. Some of the installation steps weren't
terribly intuitive. All in all, a very capable distro.

Bottom line: I prefer RedHat/Mandrake to either of these. I could easily
get used to SuSE and would probably like it very much. I can't recommend
Caldera 2.2 (Nick Petreley's glowing review notwithstanding).

I've never tried Slackware or Debian. I'll probably give them a go one of
these days.

Later,
Tim

--
Timothy D. Wilson			"A little song, a little dance,
University of MN, chem. dept.		a little seltzer down your 
wilson@chem.umn.edu			pants."   -Chuckles the Clown
Phone: (612) 625-9828                       as eulogized by Ted Baxter