Linux Distributions

I put this page here to suggest Linux distributions to those just getting started with Linux. I've been working with Linux since 1991, somewhere around kernel release 0.7. I got interested in Linux while researching various Unix distributions that could be used for teaching Unix System V release 4 classes. I was a Unix Instructor at Data General and we wanted to use commodity hardware, such as a PC, to teach generic Unix classes on. This was back in the days of the i386 personal computer. They didn't typically have much for memory, 64M if you were lucky. So I needed something that was light-weight on memory requirements, small, and cheap. I was using Archie and Veronica, some old ftp-type tools to search the internet as well as searching the news groups using an email program called Pine. That's where I ran across Linux.

Linux was young, raw and free! Best of all, it ran on an Intel CPU chip, an i386. One of the first distributions I down loaded was Slackware. Back in those days we didn't have the world-wide-web, so all of my downloads were performed using ftp. The University of Chapel Hill, North Carolina was hosting the Slackware distribution on their public anonymous ftp site. Slackware was pretty easy to install. It was downloaded as floppy disk images and was installed onto the computer from floppies. However, you had to be computer literate, and I don't just mean using windows. You needed to understand some of the basics of Unix. You needed to understand networking and you needed to know how to compile C programs. Having been a Unix instructor I was comfortable with slackware, but it's not for beginners. I used slackware for several years.

More Linux distributions started showing up over the years. Once the world-wide-web came into being, it was easier to locate and download those distributions. While at Data General I ran across a new distribution called RedHat. RedHat added features that slackware did not have, such as package management and tools, wizards, to aid in the system setup and configuration. One of the most difficult challenges to setting up a Linux system was the graphics, called X11 back then. Another challenge was configuring the sound cards. RedHat added wizards to aid in that configuration.

Linux still wasn't at the same level of ease as windows and I noticed disparity in the wizards that RedHat released to manage and configure different aspects of the system. That disparity continues today with the current RedHat releases. Then a friend (Thanks Bill!) at IBM introduced me to another distribution that knocked my socks off. It was called SuSE Linux. The SuSE distribution was created by a team out of Germany. Having spent 8 years with a German computer company (Nixdorf) I was well aware of the German's attention to detail. And this distribution demonstrated that. The SuSE team added a system management tool called YAST (Yet Another System Tool). This was an administrative tool that pulled all the aspects of system management together. You executed one program, yast, that presented menu's either in text mode or graphics mode. Now I didn't need to remember all the numerous system-config tools that redhat used; I could just run yast and get into management of various parts of the system. Having taught AT&T's System V Unix, I was well aware that the boys over at bell labs knew the right way to put together a distribution and provide the necessary administration tools to manage it. System V Unix included a tool called sysadm. This program was a menu driven tool to manage all the aspects of a Unix system. With SuSE, I finally found a Linux equivalent in yast.

I continue to run SuSE on my home systems. Only now I run OpenSuSE. Novell had aquired the SuSE team but kept the distribution open source thru the OpenSuSE distribution. The yast tool has been improved to yast2. If you're just getting started with Linux, OpenSuSE is the way to go. Some people argue that you're not learning Linux by using an administration tool. I argue that I'm more productive using an administration tool as I don't need to manually twiddle bits in dozens of files just to configure a system. I can now spend my time doing development and research without being bogged down with silly configurations. If you're looking for a stable, easy to manage Linux distribution for use in the business world, go with SuSE Enterprise from Novell. Your administration team will need to spend less time learning how to manage the system. The yast tools don't do everything you may need, but they get you fairly close.

I still continue to research various Linux distributions. One that gotten some popularity is called Debian. The Debian distributions reminds me of the slackware days, only that Debian has one of the best package management systems for Linux of all the distributions. The Debian release also has one of the largest repositories of open source programs of all the distributions. The Debian distribution is also very compact. It's perfect if you're building some kind of embedded appliance as there is processor support for more than just Intel or Amd chips. It can also be scaled down into a very small footprint, perfect for flashing into a USB stick or compact flash. The Debian release has splintered into various other popular distributions, such as Ubuntu and Knoppix. The Knoppix release is excellent if you just want to try out Linux without wiping out your hard drive to run it. The Knoppix release introduced the idea of live-run cdroms. You can put the Knoppix cdrom into your cdrom drive on your computer and then boot your computer from the cdrom drive. Knoppix runs from the cdrom, without requiring to be installed to the hard drive.