Distro Differences

[colsandurz]

Hi everyone,

I have been experimenting with different ditros, most recently Fedora 9. I have found some smaller differences between them like pre-loaded applications, package management, and cosmetic things, and I've found many similiarities like the kernel and the contents of /. But I'm having a hard finding out why someone would choose one over another. For example, I just started working at IBM and openSuse and RedHat are used here, but not debian or mandriva. Is it as simple as some distros are designed for certain applications? Can anyone offer some insight as into this.

[Twitch6000]

Well I think people would use Open Suse because it is good for ex windows users and supports drivers pretty good.
Also its security is great.

[smartboyathome]

It basically depends on your tastes. I use Ubuntu on my laptop because I need more stability, but I use Arch on my desktop, because it is light and allows you to customize everything.

[Ub1476]

It's a matter of taste, or in some cases, business deals.

I use Ubuntu on my desktop because it just works. On laptop I use Arch though.

[chucky chuckaluck]

aren't red hat and novell the top two most used enterprise distros?

[atomkarinca]

To me the most important difference is the package management. I love apt-get and I can find deb packages very easily. Plus problem solving is easier with Ubuntu, since there are huge amount of resources such as these forums.

[ibuclaw]

Hi everyone,

I have been experimenting with different ditros, most recently Fedora 9. I have found some smaller differences between them like pre-loaded applications, package management, and cosmetic things, and I've found many similiarities like the kernel and the contents of /. But I'm having a hard finding out why someone would choose one over another. For example, I just started working at IBM and openSuse and RedHat are used here, but not debian or mandriva. Is it as simple as some distros are designed for certain applications? Can anyone offer some insight as into this.

Given that there are somewhat nearly half a million switch combinations when compiling the linux kernel, I think that it's safe to say that distro's running the same kernel really "aren't" running the same kernel!

I just go with the distro that gave me the best hardware detection and stability. So it was Debian all the way for me! And I've only used Debian-like systems ever since.

Installed Ubuntu as children started to get interested in computing.
They use it alot more than any other OS in my house!

[yatt]

Hi everyone,

I have been experimenting with different ditros, most recently Fedora 9. I have found some smaller differences between them like pre-loaded applications, package management, and cosmetic things, and I've found many similiarities like the kernel and the contents of /. But I'm having a hard finding out why someone would choose one over another. For example, I just started working at IBM and openSuse and RedHat are used here, but not debian or mandriva. Is it as simple as some distros are designed for certain applications? Can anyone offer some insight as into this.

Some of it is support. You'll mostly see Suse and Red Hat in the corporate world as Novell and Red Hat both provide great support for their product, which they gear towards a corporate environment as best they can.

After that, package management is a pretty big deal. For example, Fedora has traditionally had horrifically slow. There are also differences to how well they handle tough dependency issues and how packages are split up.

Then there is application patching. Unless you are using Slackware, your applications have 3rd party patches applied to them. The patches could add/remove features, fix bugs, make the application faster/slower, etc all depending on the goals of the distro. Even if two distros use the same patches, you may not get identical applications as at compile time you can disable/enable features (I believe Fedora's php package does not include mysql support, when most other distros do).

Then there is even lower level stuff such as default config files, that I'm not going to bother going into.

[VileTimes]

To me the most important difference is the package management. I love apt-get and I can find deb packages very easily. Plus problem solving is easier with Ubuntu, since there are huge amount of resources such as these forums.

That's exactly what got me to switch over to Ubuntu. I started out with Slackware 9.0 a few years back because, in spite of it being supposedly "harder" because you had to read commented text files via the terminal to configure your system, everything really *did* work compared to the flashier GUI configuration "tools" of then Red Hat and Mandrake.

The two reasons you mentioned above got me to switch and has kept me an Ubuntu user for almost two years now.

... although, I did download and burn Slackware 12.0 DVD last week for nothing more than irrational nostalgia I've come to understand, since I haven't replaced Ubuntu with Slackware on any of my machines.

Ubuntu is my distro of choice, but I'm going back to Slack if Ubuntu begins to annoy me for some unfathomable reason.