Distro Roundup

I ran a distro review about 6 months ago, and I figure that now is as good a time as any to do a new review.

Some distros have done major upgrades, other only version upgrades, I'm going to just hit the high points with this roundup.

Red Hat 6.9

I was going to write off RH for this roundup since they were only on 6.2 (a stable version of 6.1) but then I got the 6.9 beta. 7.0 should be on the streets by the time you read this, and it will basically be the stable version of 6.9 beta. 6.9 is stable. I have it running on my main workstation and my laptop, both with zero problems. I was a Mandrake fan for some time, but with this one RH takes back the lead. Latest versions of everything (some libs are more current than those avail on rpmfind) and the 2.2.16 kernel. The installer is the same, though they threw a GUI on LILO (who knows why). I was really impressed with 3.05 of RPM, it is faster than 3.04 and complains less. I painlessly upgraded to kernel 2.4.20 and use it on the laptop as the default. You could get your RH 6.2 to essentially be 6.9 by installing several hundred new packages, but it's MUCH easier to do it this way. It even has a more current build of Gnome than helixcode.

Mandrake 7.1

Not much change since 7.1 except the installer is a bit more stable. Still a great distro, but I had problems upgrading packages (that may have been and rpm problem rather than a Mandrake problem, but I got my hands on RH 6.9 and decided to play with that instead). I will certainly be keeping my eye on them for their next release, as I suspect it will give RH a run for their money.

SuSe 6.4

7.0 just came out, so I may need to update this to reflect the changes in YAST etc. Overall I thought SuSe had the second best installer (Mandrake being the best) and was very user friendly. I can see why they are called the Red Hat of Europe. TONS of software comes with SuSe, though some features (such as updater) are not as intuitive as other distros. I plan on reviving one of my older pentium boxes as a SuSe box since I think it's a quite solid distro, but doesn't suit my needs quite as well as RH or Mandrake.

Corel 1.2

I saw Corel referred to as the "Windows of Linux" the other day, due to security problems. I tend to agree that Corel is not the distro for the serious user, but if you are new to Linux it is definitely your best bet for ease of use. 1.2 updates many packages and is more stable but other than that hasn't really changed much.

Slackware 7.0

Ah, Slackware. Can't beat Slack for powerhouse dev station or server. Unless you prefer Debian. 7.0 still uses the same ...

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