Suse or Redhat ? [Archive] - JustLinux Forums

djk

02-11-2001, 06:01 PM

I'm new to Linux and I want to learn it (for school too).
Once I've chosen a distribution, I'm not planning to change.
Because of that I wanted to know which distribution will be the best choice for the future?
I know both distributions are "enemies" (not really) and I read that Suse will expand their interests in the US leaving their people in Germany behind. But Red Hat is already more distributed an the US --> like a standard; which is why most documentation is found on redhat.

I really really really don't know which one to chose? Suse or RedHat7.(0+x)-->soon?

Which one is the best for future?

Thank you

plasmid

02-11-2001, 06:52 PM

how about mandrake (based on redhat) or Debian (very popular in this forum)

-plasmid

Tyr-7BE

02-11-2001, 08:31 PM

I can't really say because I use Mandrake 7.2, which is based on Red Hat. I can tell you this though...RPMs are VERY VERY finicky little *****es who will lead you on a wild goose chase to set up all the dependencies only to find that if you install certain dependencies, X won't work (happened 2 days ago...had the most delightful time getting it going again). I'm not sure how SuSE handles its packages, but it's gotta be better than Red Hat's method.
PS: If you're a newbie, Mandrake is a wonderful distro. It tends to take care of a lot of things for you, leaving just enough problems for you to get your feet wet :)

linuxgrrl

02-11-2001, 09:25 PM

I have liked Mandrake and have had no problems with RPM's, however, I usually choose to download and install from source when available. Even though SuSE is supposed to have great hardware support, I have NOT found that to be the case. I think it is unlikely that you will want to find a distro and stick with it, never to try another. I have been given the go ahead at work to build Linux server; I fully anticipate trying to install a few different distros on the machine before deciding on "the one." My cohort is interested in Caldera, which is why I posted a question on people's experience with and opinions of Caldera, Call for Opinions on Caldera. (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=014981). I am personally interested in Debian, though I remain very interested in people's thoughtful opinions on a variety of distros! Nothing speaks better than experience. I'm watching this thread hopefully.

rod

02-11-2001, 09:54 PM

Debian, Debian, Debian

It has the best package management of any distro. djk you say once you install a distro you are not going to change. That in itself is a very good reason to go with Debian. To remain current with Debian all you have to do is run the command apt-get update then apt-get upgrade. No need to ever reinstall again. Apt will go out and fetch the required packages and dependencies, then install them.

Debian will always be free. Debian's Social Contract (http://www.debian.org/social_contract)

For more information
Debian's home page (http://www.debian.org/)

Install the base system, then install only the packages you want or need. Installation guide (http://www.debian.org/releases/potato/i386/install)

Regards,
Rod

[ 11 February 2001: Message edited by: rod ]

djk

02-12-2001, 06:13 PM

People please, Red Hat or Suse?

Mandrake--->no - no thanks
Debian is not for beginners?!??!

Red Hat or Suse?

allwise_guru

02-12-2001, 06:17 PM

Use SuSE, I am currently running SuSE 7.0, and like it, I have used Red Hat, Mandrake, and Storm Linux, and I like SuSE the best, it takes care of alot of stuff for you, but lets you do things on your own if you want to. SuSE all the way

ColdPack

02-12-2001, 06:54 PM

Originally posted by djk:
People please, Red Hat or Suse?

Mandrake--->no - no thanks
Debian is not for beginners?!??!

Red Hat or Suse?

I'm sorry but I have to break in here and say Debian is perfectly suited for beginners. If you go with pure Debian, the install is a little raw but nothing a simple reading of the installation guide they have on their web site won't help. And, Storm, while going under quick, is still a very strong distro and can stay up to date via apt-get. And Storm's install is VERY easy. The soon-to-be-released (as in "not beta") Progeny (one or two months away) is another Debian-based option!
Really, if someone said Debian is not for newbies, that person didn't try it.
I was a newbie when RedHat5.2 pissed me off. I installed Debian in no time. And I won't switch... ever.
I still experiment with other distros but Debian is my main bag and will likely always be. (Also, give Conectiva 6.0 a try. Very slick and easy install, RPM-based if that's what you want, AND...AND...
APT-GET!
Yup, and it's working pretty well if you stay with the Conectiva repositories.
So, there you go.
Suse, by the way, in my experience, is not MUCH different from RedHat so it's like comparing apples to apples (Jonathons to Rome Reds).

[ 12 February 2001: Message edited by: ColdPack ]

Bradmont

02-12-2001, 06:55 PM

Originally posted by djk
Debian is not for beginners?!??!

I beg to differ...
The only remotely difficult thing about Debian is the install, and once that's over, you're laughin'... apt will make your life very easy. The install itself isn't that difficult either, you just need to know your system, and skim the install docs.

Bradmont

02-12-2001, 06:59 PM

Awww, ColdPack, you beat me to it ;)

ColdPack

02-12-2001, 07:10 PM

Originally posted by Bradmont:
Awww, ColdPack, you beat me to it ;)

A first for me, I think! ;)
Perhaps the quick draws on both our parts will get the point across!

Tyr-7BE

02-12-2001, 07:48 PM

Originally posted by djk:
People please, Red Hat or Suse?

Mandrake--->no - no thanks
Debian is not for beginners?!??!

Red Hat or Suse?

First I must say that Mandrake==Red Hat. They say it's "fully compatible" with Red Hat, meaning that it uses RPMs *shudder* just like Red Hat does, and it has a very nearly identical file system structure (although all distros are pretty much the same...maybe a file name difference here and there). Drake takes care of a lot of low-level stuff, leaving you more time to familiarize yourself with linux in general (and not writing from lynx, asking people for help on why X won't work *shudder again*).
That said, my very first installation ever was Red Hat 6.1. I was young and confused and my first impression was "Linux sucks!!". I'm not sure how RH 7.x is (I assume it's a little more technologically advanced). As for which is better...*shrug*. From what I hear, they're both very similar distros. The only thing that would sway me in the direction of Red Hat is that currently it's more prominent in North America. That doesn't mean a whole lot though. If you're looking to learn linux for school, my spider senses tell me to try to stay away from debian. Debian is a strange duck. It's a GNU OS, of which their basic debian uses a linux kernel. Technically, it's linux; they just seem to want to take a different path than everyone else.
It's a coin-toss. Go for Red Hat because more people who post here seem to use Red Hat and you'll be able to get more support from LNO, and LNO is a wonderful, helpful community.
Out of curiosity, why not mandrake? Mandrake is the same as Red Hat, but it's a little more desktop/newbie-oriented. Check out the Mandrake Web Site (http://www.linux-mandrake.com/) for more info. I run Mandrake and I'm EXTREMELY pleased with it. And like others say, even though you say you'll stick with your distro now, that probably won't be the case.
I've said a lot of stuff...most of it irrelevant.

Red Hat vs SuSE: Red Hat...more common/more support.

manual_overide

02-13-2001, 01:06 AM

SuSE. It uses rpm as the package manager just like Red Hat. Besides it comes with every package known to man. You don't need to install anything. You'll probably spend the first couple of days deleting apps you won't use.

If you do feel you need something, just fire up yast. It's just as good, if not better than apt-get. Fully menu driven, just point it at a ftp site, and it automatically checks to see if you have the package installed, and if you have the already have the version you want. Tell it to install, and it does.

SuSE has done some really great things with modified X servers, like getting the newest video cards to work before anybody else. Plus SuSE is affiliated with User Friendly and is not evil like Red Hat :D

Bradmont

02-13-2001, 01:02 PM

Originally Posted by Tyr-7BE
Debian is a strange duck. It's a GNU OS, of which their basic debian uses a linux kernel. Technically, it's linux; they just seem to want to take a different path than everyone else.

Yah... they're focusing on quality, not profit ;)

Originally Posted by manual_overide
You don't need to install anything. You'll probably spend the first couple of days deleting apps you won't use.

How is this a good thing?

milanuk

02-13-2001, 01:51 PM

Originally posted by manual_overide:
SuSE. It uses rpm as the package manager just like Red Hat. Besides it comes with every package known to man. You don't need to install anything. You'll probably spend the first couple of days deleting apps you won't use.

If you do feel you need something, just fire up yast. It's just as good, if not better than apt-get. Fully menu driven, just point it at a ftp site, and it automatically checks to see if you have the package installed, and if you have the already have the version you want. Tell it to install, and it does.

Ok. I'm gonna have to throw the B.S. flag here. a) yast1 works pretty good. but suse _appears_ to be yielding to the marketing droids and phasing out yast1 in favor of yast2, which doesn't work so great, as of SuSE 7.0, at least. Even in CLI mode. b) yast only works it's magic on stuff on the distro CD's. Upgrading from the 'net? It'll do it, but all the magical information about what the hell you're installing doesn't show up. Mirroring the SuSE updates directories? Same thing. And with the lovely SuSE naming conventions, the 'links' may not tell you squat about the package.

In the end, yast only really works if you like using the software on the CD, of which there is a metric buttload. But if it gets dated (which it does), and you want to install a newer version, yast won't be near as helpful, IMHO. At that point, you are doing the same dog-n-pony show as RedHat, Mandrake, etc.

SuSE has done some really great things with modified X servers, like getting the newest video cards to work before anybody else. Plus SuSE is affiliated with User Friendly and is not evil like Red Hat :D

SuSE has indeed done a _lot_ of work on the Linux kernel, special X servers, LVM, ReiserFS, etc. If you want a distro that supports these items out of the box, ready to run, SuSE would be a good choice. Otherwise, the choice is less clear, and boils down largely to personal preference.

Monte

manual_overide

02-13-2001, 01:59 PM

Or you probably won't. I just think it's cool that after a SuSE install, you don't really need any additional software.

Let's see, which is easier? Spending a few hours in yast removing things you don't want, or pulling your hair out still trying to install debian? I'd pick yast.

Besides, he asked for a comparison between RedHat and SuSE, not if he should use Debian.

Question: Red Hat or SuSE?
A: Use Debian.

Q: OpenBSD or FreeBSD?
A: Use Debian.

Q: Warsteiner or Guiness?
A: Use Debian.

Q: Beef or Pork?
A: Use Debian.

It sounds silly after a while.

Besides, :cool:Slackware :cool:

ColdPack

02-13-2001, 02:19 PM

Originally posted by manual_overide:

Let's see, which is easier? Spending a few hours in yast removing things you don't want, or pulling your hair out still trying to install debian? I'd pick yast.

Uh, I never pulled any hair out of my head installing Debian. And there ARE debian-based distros that make the installation even "easier" (or prettier, I suppose). And Yast really pretty much stinks -- it's very limited in what it can do. To say it may be greater than apt is a delusional statement.
The fact is, this person is asking if the choice should be Suse or RedHat as if there's any great difference.
In my experience, there isn't much of a difference. Debian is easier in the long run and is consistent from one release to the next. That is not true with RH or Suse or many others. Too often the "improvements" in those distros really mean "big changes" and that is why people often have a hard time upgrading from, say, RedHat6.0 to 7.0 or Suse 6.4 to 7.0... it usually ends up with a fresh install. But with Debian, it's a snap.
Yes, this person asked about Suse or RedHat but I didn't say "Debian" because I wanted to be difficult. It simply sounded like this person has been prematurely scared off of it from others who likely haven't installed it or heard stories about it themselves.
So, if you want a stable system that is relatively painless to install(I, a computer idiot for the most part, can attest to this. I would've ditched linux entirely a year ago if it weren't for Debian) and is easy to keep current and easy to administer, then give Debian (or a Debian-bsed distro like Libranet or the soon-to-arrive Progeny) a try.
Having used several of these distros in my hunt for an appropriate one, Debian beat them all hands down.
That is why I would suggest it to anyone.

chimaybleue

02-14-2001, 07:17 AM

I'd say SuSe ... 7.1 is coming soon (for me ... It's possible you already have it ;) ) I use 7.0 and install is easy, but you still have control : once you're OK in Linux, you can do whatever you want as an advanced user ...(not like Mandrake)

Don't really like RH (it's what we have at school), but never tried to install it ...

zappy

02-14-2001, 08:11 AM

Go with the RedHat beta (Fisher) I pulled it last night and it recognized everything in my machine from my ata100 drive to Radeon 64m VIVO. I have installed numerous distro's (Slack, Debian, Suse, Mandrake, Peanut, Stormix, Caldera) also (NetBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, AIX, DEX) from the two choices you gave I suggest Redhat. I never thought I would say that but I have come to understand,
there's more to life than tweaking distro's. There's also something to say for out of the box distro's. It's companies like Redhat, Caldera, Suse, and Mandrake that are putting the squeeze on Bill's nuts. I used to think that if you didn't run Slack or Debain you weren't "IN". Truth of the matter is people who pimp one certain distro are missing the big picture. There is life outside of LNO there are people who buy HP, Dell, Compaq, and hell even e-machines that will pay hell getting Slack or Debian to run on their machine. I will say this if you do put the time into getting Slack or Deb. on your machine you will be all the wiser. But they may also break you. The time is fixing to get real ripe for people to be looking for alternatives to Windows considering ole Bill is gonna start charging a yearly fee to run WindowsXP. I think we also need to keep in mind what it was like when we first made the transition. Not eveyone has time for it, I for one have children and work as a UNIX Admin./Network Engineer for Worldcom. We run RedHat on our internal webserver why? Because if the need arises we can get support for it and we have better things to do like make money. I work with some real gurus people who write code on the fly when **** breaks they run distro's like RedHat, Suse, Caldera go figure. IBM is has been shipping their boxes with Linux for awhile, mosey on over there and see if the are shipping them with Slack or Debian and get back to me. I think for me the cause is to get as many people interested in Linux as possible. Maybe I should tell them that "LFS" is the best :p

Bradmont

02-14-2001, 04:04 PM

Originally posted by zappy:
There is life outside of LNO there are people who buy HP, Dell, Compaq, and hell even e-machines that will pay hell getting Slack or Debian to run on their machine.

Hey, I'm running on a DELL, and had no problems whatsoever getting Debian up and running. The only think that doesn't work is my winmodem (but that's a problem with ALL distros, not just debian, and I wouldn't even have it if I hadn't decided to save a few bux and live online in winblows until I got cable ;))

Bradmont

02-14-2001, 04:06 PM

Hey, who rated me?
<-----

MBMarduk

02-14-2001, 05:10 PM

To answer your question: SuSE!!!!!!

It's very nice to begin with, it installs and recognizes hardware far better than all other newbie-distros.

And when you get experienced you can reconfigure everything safely 'cuz the SuSE-guys leave messages EVERYWHERE telling you what you should/shouldn't do where and when.

Granted; this doesn't feel "CLEAN" to me either, but once _I_ get more HDD space I'm installing and triple-booting with Debian (never used it, but SOUNDS clean judging from other posts) and something ELSE...

My.02c
-Mike

GNU/br0wni3

02-15-2001, 12:30 AM

insalled RH 7 with no problems at all.
Been using it a little... works fine. not beautifully or amazingly great, fine.

:)

ifred

02-15-2001, 12:36 AM

Djk, have you had a chance to try either Red Hat or Suse? What are your impressions?

digital_spawn

02-15-2001, 12:47 AM

:eek: redhat
-o~o-
^

Dustybug

02-15-2001, 01:52 AM

SuSE definitely

SuSE 7.0 was very easy to install. It autodetected everything except my soundcard but one email to SuSE support and that was sorted.

SuSE 7.1 is out now so it's got to be even better. I've only been using Linux for a couple of months and I've had more problems installing and using Windows (sorry!) than I have SuSE Linux.

rapjo

02-15-2001, 02:17 AM

If your only choices are Redhat and SuSE, I'd say SuSE all the way. Redhat comes with broken gcc, and the most security holes known to a linux distro.

Lets also look at what Each Distro has contributed the the Linux world. Redhat has Really Petrified Monkeys, RPM, a horrible idea that makes me want to scream everytime I touch most RPM based distros. SuSE, while being RPM based, has YaST2, and ALSA, which means great installer and sound for greater then 95 percent of the soundcards that exist. If you want your distro to last, remeber that Redhat 7.0 won't last more then a few weeks without an upgrade...so I think SuSE is the clear winner if RH and SuSE are the only choices

zappy

02-15-2001, 03:06 AM

Suse is nice can't wait to see what 7.1 looks like be nice if they would let some people have a looksee before they actually shipped though.

bdg1983

02-15-2001, 04:13 AM

SuSE !!!

Originally posted by ColdPack:
Too often the "improvements" in those distros really mean "big changes" and that is why people often have a hard time upgrading from, say, RedHat6.0 to 7.0 or Suse 6.4 to 7.0... it usually ends up with a fresh install.

I upgraded from SuSE 6.3 to 7.0 without any problems, though I don't mean nobody would have problems upgrading because I admit that big changes sometimes may cause problems and I admit rpm isn't the best packaging system out there, either. So, Debian may be better to upgrade thanks to its packaging system, but remember, djk asked SuSE or RedHat, not Debian!

YaST is pretty good setup tool and is easy even for newbies. Plus, if you buy the professional version, you'll get a load of software so you won't need to download so much things. Get SuSE!

BTW, I bet one day you'll try some other distros, too, no matter what distro you're using. It's hard to imagine that a Linux user would stick with the same distro all the time.

[ 15 February 2001: Message edited by: NGene ]

milanuk

02-15-2001, 11:52 AM

One other thing: I've used both SuSE and RedHat at home, and it's rather nice to be able to go to the net and find lots of sites w/ HOWTO's, etc. on setting up this or that. Most are RedHat, very few are SuSE. Mandrakes www.mandrakeuser.org (http://www.mandrakeuser.org) is a nice example of a site done right, hopefully SuSE's will get there. Sadly there doesn't seem to be a 'redhat-user' site that I've found yet. But as I said, most of the HOWTO's often assume a RedHat system. It may be worth considering if you are starting out and don't like having to extrapolate the equivalent path/command for your particular distro.

Monte

milanuk

02-15-2001, 11:52 AM

milanuk

02-15-2001, 11:52 AM

djk

02-15-2001, 03:06 PM

Originally posted by ifred:
Djk, have you had a chance to try either Red Hat or Suse? What are your impressions?
Thanks everybody for their brief reply!
I decided to start learning linux on redhat7.0. Just installed it - no problems at all - though I must still update those knows bugs which are important I guess...
I have a lot to learn but I can find a lot about Redhat, this is why I chose Redhat to begin as a newbie.

ifred

02-15-2001, 04:28 PM

Right on! I hope you have fun and enjoy working with Red Hat (or whever you end up using further down the road).

exupery

02-15-2001, 10:00 PM

I am new to Linux and I got a boxed copy of SuSE 7.0 and tried to install it. I could not get my monitor to work even when I put in the frequencies. Yast1 worked to get the text version working OK. I went to the library to get some books to see what I could learn to help me out and one had a copy of RH 6.2. So I thought I would give it a try. It installed without a problem recognized the monitor and also was able to hook up my cable modem without any input on my part which suprised me and the few friends I have that are useing Linux.
I have not heard anything real great about RH 7 though and have been advised not to try it.
Just thoughts from someone who has only been up and running for 2 days.
E :)