Which would you pick?

[Scorpion2k6]

I am a Windows User, I have used both of the Linux Distros that I am asking about for personal use and for business use. But they were old versions... I also had to uninstall them after a while for incompatibility with the servers at both locations. More so at the Business level then at home. The techs at my job didn't want to be bothered with Linux and told my supervisor about me running it, and I was told to switch over to Windows. So I did...

Now I am setting up a Linux Box up for a home network and need input on which one would be better???

 

[Nothinman]

Ubuntu, easily.

Unless you're wanting to get comfortable with Linux for something specific and then it would make sense to use the same distro, for instance if they use RHEL at work you would want to use CentOS (or RHEL if you can get them to copy you the discs) since it's just a rebuild and relabeling of RHEL.

 

[willtriv]

uh well the both have simliar gui package tools. I think the fc6 default repository may be better. I find dependencies in both to be sketchy and I'm not a fan of binary packages. If your doing a business server with multiple server guys I'm assuming your business is beyond both of these distro's. Trustix, Centos, RHEL are the big ones for business. If your doomed to stay between ubuntu or fc6, go ubuntu. Its life cycle is suppose to be another 4 years. It would be lucky to make it another 9 months, but fc7 will be out before you can finish install fc6

 

[Nothinman]

I think the fc6 default repository may be better.

I'd love to hear your criteria for that.

I find dependencies in both to be sketchy and I'm not a fan of binary packages.

I don't run Ubuntu personally but I do run Debian which is where most of Ubuntu's packages come from and I've never seen any dependencies that I would consider "sketchy". And if you're not using binary packages you're wasting your time, but it's yoru time to waste so be my guest.

If your doomed to stay between ubuntu or fc6, go ubuntu. Its life cycle is suppose to be another 4 years.

I would consider myself priviledged to be able to use Ubuntu in a corporate environment, I absolutely hated supporting RHEL at my last job. But that would be Dapper that's got the LTS, not Edgy.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

I've tried FC6 and while there's nothing particularly bad with it, there are still a few minor inconveniences like having the default gnome settings (when double-clicking a folder within nautilus a new window pops up..) and not detecting my wireless device (not their fault, I need madwifi drivers and they have the whole proprietary hal..).

Ubuntu is much more well suited for home desktop users.

 

[Scorpion2k6]

I wouldn't say that I am Doomed to use Ubuntu, I have my pick of the litter here... I am setting up the network personally and just needed some input on what most people would suggest.
I have a choice of Gentoo, Mandriva, SUSE, Novell (only for the servers), Red Hat Fedora Core, or Linspire

I was actually thinking of this setup:
Servers: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
Workstations/Registers: Fedora Core 6
Desktop Users (ie. Me, and my employees): Linspire

 

[postmortemIA]

SUSE or Ubuntu, that is some doubt, but FC6 is a joke. Unless you want to scratch your head why there are 100MB of minor updates everyday.

RHEL 5 is not out yet.

SUSE has best all-around support: good RPM support (you'll need it eventually), good looks, user friendly.

 

[Nothinman]

I was actually thinking of this setup:
Servers: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
Workstations/Registers: Fedora Core 6
Desktop Users (ie. Me, and my employees): Linspire

I would really rethink that. RHEL is nice if you want support, but if you don't require support for something like Oracle it's a PITA because there's so few packages for it. Same thing with FC6 only without the support aspect, the core repository is miniscule so you'll have to go to 3rd part repos for anything Fedora doesn't package and you should only trust 3rd party repos if you absolutely have to. Ubuntu has somewhere around 20,000 packages available once you enable universe and multiverse, the latter packages aren't officially supported but it's better than what you get from FC. And I would avoid Linspire completely, they're Debian based so it can't be too bad but with Ubuntu and Debian out there I don't see a reason to consider them.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
I've tried FC6 and while there's nothing particularly bad with it, there are still a few minor inconveniences like having the default gnome settings (when double-clicking a folder within nautilus a new window pops up..) and not detecting my wireless device (not their fault, I need madwifi drivers and they have the whole proprietary hal..).

Ubuntu is much more well suited for home desktop users.

Look at dadwifi. Hopefully that project'll move quickly and open support can come to the rest of us...

 

[n0cmonkey]

I don't mind FC5 which is on my laptop, but I didn't care a whole lot for Ubuntu. I've also spent a lot less time on my Ubuntu machine.

If you're setting this up for a business, pick one distro and stick with it. Supporting multiple distros could eat up more time than its worth.

 

[Nothinman]

I don't mind FC5 which is on my laptop, but I didn't care a whole lot for Ubuntu.

I don't see how, I put FC6 on my notebook to test their Xen support and it took a good hour extra to download and install all of the updates after installation. Whatever that yum updates daemon is called just sat there using 100% CPU for most of that time and there was no indication that it was even doing that so when I clicked on the "Updates Available" icon I got an error about the database already being locked. I'll admit that's probably a minor issue, it most likely only comes up during the initial installation but I still can't get past how frustratingly slow yum is and how few packages are available without trusting 3rd parties not to break my system.

If you're setting this up for a business, pick one distro and stick with it. Supporting multiple distros could eat up more time than its worth.

Depends on your experience level and how much you're supporting those various distros. For instance, supporting RHEL on servers and desktops will most likely still be different enough that it would be like supporting two distros because the former will be mostly setting up daemons, disks, network stuff, etc while the latter will be printers, network mounts, etc. But yea the difference between RHEL and SuSe or Ubuntu would still be much higher.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
I don't see how, I put FC6 on my notebook to test their Xen support and it took a good hour extra to download and install all of the updates after installation. Whatever that yum updates daemon is called just sat there using 100% CPU for most of that time and there was no indication that it was even doing that so when I clicked on the "Updates Available" icon I got an error about the database already being locked. I'll admit that's probably a minor issue, it most likely only comes up during the initial installation but I still can't get past how frustratingly slow yum is and how few packages are available without trusting 3rd parties not to break my system.

I have no idea about that button. I try not to use Gnome and I generally use the command line when I update.

If Yum is slow I don't notice. I tell it to do something, then I start doing something else instead of watching it. By the time I look at it again it's done.

EDIT: I've had very good luck with the livna repo. too.
EDIT2: Oops, the gnome thing wasn't suppose to survive.

 

[Nothinman]

I have no idea about that button. I try not to use Gnome (I like good software ) and I generally use the command line when I update.

Well AFAIK that would have failed too because of the yum updated daemon. And obviously you're software tastes are suspect since you also like to use OpenBSD for a desktop... =)

If Yum is slow I don't notice. I tell it to do something, then I start doing something else instead of watching it. By the time I look at it again it's done.

Usually when I tell the package manager to do something it's because I want to do something with the package I asked for and the excessive amount of waiting yum puts me through is frustrating at best.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I have no idea about that button. I try not to use Gnome (I like good software ) and I generally use the command line when I update.

Well AFAIK that would have failed too because of the yum updated daemon. And obviously you're software tastes are suspect since you also like to use OpenBSD for a desktop... =)

I editted out the gnome comment. You should see some of the other things I edit out sometimes. I often write two or three versions of posts before hitting the button.

And, I've actually been using Linux for my desktop needs lately. Although, I've got my Powerbook back... :evil:

If Yum is slow I don't notice. I tell it to do something, then I start doing something else instead of watching it. By the time I look at it again it's done.

Usually when I tell the package manager to do something it's because I want to do something with the package I asked for and the excessive amount of waiting yum puts me through is frustrating at best.

I just install things so I can brag about the number of RPMs I have installed.

Of course I want to do something with the package, but waiting 5 minutes instead of 3 isn't going to affect me one way or another. Especially since I'm usually trying to do a good half dozen things at once.

 

[Nothinman]

I just install things so I can brag about the number of RPMs I have installed.

Then you should definitely look at Ubuntu or Debian, with nearly 20,000 packages available in sid FC can't really come close. =)

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I just install things so I can brag about the number of RPMs I have installed.

Then you should definitely look at Ubuntu or Debian, with nearly 20,000 packages available in sid FC can't really come close. =)

If it wouldn't be so difficult to switch, I'd probably change my laptop over to Debian.

 

[Scorpion2k6]

Thank you all for posting on here. I have pretty much made a final decision about we are going to do....
Servers: Ubuntu Server
Workstation/Registers/Desktop Users: Ubuntu 6.10

We were able to contact them and they offered us a huge deal for 5 years of Tech Support... So we are going to become a Ubuntu Based Shop... LOL

Again thank you all for posting to this

 

[Brazen]

Just be sure you use Ubuntu 6.04 for your server (aka Dapper). You don't want to be having to do a major version upgrade on your servers every year, plus Ubuntu will be doing less "bleeding edge" and therefor risky things with the LTS versions. I am using Ubuntu Dapper server here for web, mysql, and file servers (with more on the way) and have no problems except for the file server maxes out the CPU about once a day and has to be rebooted (did not do this in testing ), so I'm going to try switching that server to Debian. So far, going between Debian and Ubuntu has been rather easy... much much easier than going between CentOS/Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu.

 

[Nothinman]

We were able to contact them and they offered us a huge deal for 5 years of Tech Support... So we are going to become a Ubuntu Based Shop... LOL

Nice, I'd be interested in hearing how well their support actually is.

 

[postmortemIA]

I observed same problems with FC5 updater, that thing was obnoxious. It takes more time to get list of updates than to receive all updates on other distros. After list of updates is downloaded, resolving dependencies takes as much time. Then, finally you have 50MB+ to download and update per day...

Then RPM support: both FC5 and FC6 will download dependnecies from online repos instead of asking for CD/DVD. so it can happen that you want to install program from CD, and all dependencies are there in same directory, but installer tool will download them.

Then there was bug with device-mapper and tool that makes boot image, so whoever had LVM or RAID couldn't use new kernel. And originally shipped kernel with FC5 didn't permit kernel modules, so nvidia drivers couldn't be installed at all.

To start software management, you have to be connected to internet or it will close itself. Even for software you want to install from CD/DVD.

Enough?

 

[BurnItDwn]

I probably don't have much (or anything) new to offer to the table as Nothinman and n0cmonkey have already gotten their hands dirty here.
That being said, I hate redhat, I'd pick Ubuntu.
That being said, of the Linux distros I've tried, I like Slackware the best, and I'd much rather mess with Debian Unstable than Ubuntu.

That being said, I'm one of the "crazies" who likes to run OpenBSD on my laptop as a desktop OS. (OpenBSD keeps getting better and better and better to me. sooo easy and quick to patch the kernel, I honestly can't find anything I dislike about it.)

I'm tempted to change my avatar from the Penguin, but there's no blowfish!

 

[programmer]

I chose FC6 and glad I did. A plus is that RedHat is our corporate platform, so settings, paths, etc. are familiar.