just curious... redhat vs. slackware

[goten2k]

hey
i have just recently tried them both out, i'm just a newbie..but i cant think of a good reason why anyone would use slackware over redhat. right now i'm running slackware, and it's nothing but headaches to getting gnome running, in redhat it was up and running in a few minutes.

[Slackmonster]

Personally I really like Slackware. I'm more of a hands on type of person and really like getting involved in getting stuff to work. Not only that but I've been impressed with Slackwares stability, find the install easy and concise, and the fact that Redhat feels more and more like an up and coming M$ in the Linux world. But hey, as I said it's only my opinion.

[dvdnut]

until you get yourself experienced and wanna go "hands on" then redhat is fine until then.

i use redhat myself, although ive been using it a while, im just not confident enough to manipulate and customise to my total liking as i dont know what i want out of it yet.

[ombra]

I have used both Red Hat and Mandrake and initially I thought they were great. They behaved somewhat like windows which made the transition easy. I started using linux because I wanted a challenge and neither Red Hat nor Mandrake was giving it to me anymore. I decided to install Slackware and have been happy ever since. Also from what I have read, Slackware and Debian packages are pretty much built from the same source you can get from the authors. Red Hat and Mandrake like to modify them to fit their distro instead of the other way around.

Slackware is cool because I say it is. :)

[MBMarduk]

It's been said before in this thread:
RH and its look-alikes are great for getting your feet wet.

I started off with SuSE 6.4 and VERRY glad I did...nice and easy and well-documented.

Q. How do you know when it's time to try something more hands-on?
A. When you feel the distro is "getting in my/your way".

[mcmanus69]

Yes, I concur... Mandrake (8.0) and SuSE (7.2) are great as introductory OSes. If you are "31337" enough for the challenge you can try Slackware. I personally like Mandrake a lot, because you can still do the things you do in Slackware/Debian (the hard way) as opposed to using the GUI for everything. That and I can't get Slackware working for two reasons: 1.) I can't get XFree86 4.1.0 setup with my GF2 MX (what's the stinkin' command!?) and 2.) it ALWAYZ installs LILO (every stinkin' time!) in the MBR even when I say "don't install LILO". Gay. (hint: help!)

[MBMarduk]

Originally posted by mcmanus69:
<STRONG>...and 2.) it ALWAYZ installs LILO (every stinkin' time!) in the MBR even when I say "don't install LILO". Gay. (hint: help!)</STRONG>

Like mdwatts would say: I'll bite...
Heh, "'drake knows better for newbies" I'd think.
Maybe it doesn't ALLOW "not installing LILO" and as such always installs LILO *somewhere* rather than fail.(I have no experience with MDK)

Whenever you're installing LILO, *just* before giving the okay, ALT-Fx to another console and check out your /etc/lilo.conf.
See what it says in the header; if it says "boot = /dev/hda(x)" or similar it's gonna install it you-know-where.
If so, try force-changing this to "/dev/fd0" with your favorite editor :)

BTW, it is *possible* that at that moment the MDk install-script will use a config file OTHER than /etc/lilo.conf (the manpage says: 'lilo -C &lt;configfile&gt; ) so keep an eye peeled for the tell-tale floppy-LED!