Which Distro........

[rh0win]

I am curious about something i was thinking of getting myself a ibook soon and i wanted to wipe it clean and slap yellowdog or Debian on it but i am not sure which of these two distros would be better for me. Right now i am running redhat 8.0.

I would greatly appreciate it if you guys could tell me the pros and cons of having either one. Debian or Yellowdog?


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Thank you!

[ShieldWolf]

I'm an x86 user, so I don't have any experience with Yellow Dog, but I wanted to point out that Mandrake 8.2 is also available for PPC hardware.

It should be at least somewhat familiar to a Red Hat user.

[rh0win]

Well i was never really intersted in Mandrake. It just never really grabbed me like how redhat grabbed me. Plus i would like to get my RHCE sometime next year if possible. I am just wondering if i do get a ibook or powerbook would using Debian hinder me a little from knowing Redhat?

[ShieldWolf]

I'm not real familiar with Debian, but from what I do know, Debian and Red Hat are very different animals. Different installs, different software management, different configs, and even different philosophies. So yeah, learning Debian might confuse you when studying for your RHCE.

On the other hand, Mandrake is Red Hat based, with many of the same strengths/shortcomings of it's parent. In my opinion(take it for what you will), sticking with a Red Hat based distro would be less confusing for someone studying for the RHCE.

You do realise that this whole problem would cease to exist if you bought an x86 based notebook and just ran Red Hat on it, right? Are you that set on an iBook? And if so, why not leave osX on it? The os seems to be the best reason for buying an Apple product to me, as their hardware seems to be way overpriced for the performance. Granted, Apple has style, but I've seen some mighty nice products from Sony, Toshiba, HP and don't forget the Area 51 from Alienware.

Don't take me wrong, I'm not trying to start a flame war here. I know that Apple's hardware is good, it just can't compete with the prices of x86 hardware. It's a matter of scale of manufacture, not a shortcoming on Apple's part.

[rh0win]

i understand completely and yes i do know it would be easier to get a x86 laptop to slap redhat on but it would be nice to have a apple product i want ot have a little of everything i am greedy like that but i guess for right now it would be best for me to get a good laptop from toshiba.

Have you had much luck with laptops and linux? Because i would really like to get a newer model for a laptop than a older one. I am just curious about your opinion in the matter?

[solo]

FWIW... YDL is based on Red Hat. I'm very happy with my YDL install (2.3), as it's fairly complete.

I absolutely love my iBook. I upgraded the hard drive and I have YDL, DebianPPC, OS X, and OS 9 on it :D . I'd suggest getting one with the 12" screen, as you won't get any higher resolution with the 14" screen.

The feature set you get with the current Mac systems is very good also. For the hardware and software; FireWire, DVD, CD-RW, video, sound, and USB all work very well. I find the system more reliable than a PC.

[rh0win]

This is the thing though if i do get YDL do you think it is a better distro to have over Debian?

[solo]

Originally posted by rh0win
This is the thing though if i do get YDL do you think it is a better distro to have over Debian?

It's more complete out of the box, but you may learn more about Linux with Debian because there will be more configuration to do. Apt-get with Debian is so very sweet, but I'm still playing around with it to learn more aspects of it.

Much of your configuration with Debian will focus around dpkg... Apt and dpkg are functions you won't find in Red Hat, so it depends on how much RH specific learning you'll want to accomplish.