Re: Good Red Hat install

On Monday 12 May 2003 11:35, Matthew Crape wrote:
> Hey all,

Along the lines of some earlier responses I'd recommend Slackware over Red Hat, but with a few caveates.

Slackware is a much more command line oriented distro and the docs you'll read are going to be oriented toward that aspect. I run Slackware at work and Red Hat at home and actually enjoy the Slackware experience much more but it can take a lot of configuration. For example, X isn't configured by the Slackware installer (which works great for you) and don't expect to find anything equivocal to the Red Hat up2date auto-update program.

What makes Slackware a great option (IMHO) is that 1) the included documentation is top notch and 2) it's very POSIX compliant, which is to say, if you learn how to do it on Slackware, you should be able to do the same things in Red Hat, Debian, BSD, or Solaris. Learn it on Red Hat and it may or may not work anywhere else.

The Caveates, however, are worth mentioning. First, by default, Slackware is isn't any more secure other distribution (running httpd, rpc, cups, lpd, ftpd). Second, there's no friendly application for configuring a firewall, so you'll have to learn how to use iptables or something else if you want to really secure the system. Finally, the user community can be very helpful, but if you haven't rtfm'd, googled, and put some thought into your problem, you aren't going to get a nice response.

Sounds like a fun project for you no matter which way you go ...

-cheers!

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Andrew

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