[wplug] Which Red Hat version is best? UPDATE

[John Harrold]

Sometime in April Sal Mangiapane assaulted the keyboard and produced:

| Hi all,
| 
| Thanks for the help.
| 
| I got up2date working.  I changed the Python script to read
| netdict['ipaddr'] = "192.168.1.3" (it worked).  But the version of gcc I
| wanted was not part of my distribution which is version 7.
| 
| Well, I had two updated libraries (png 1.2.5 and zlib 1.1.14) that I was
| using and everything worked after the up2date.  But, then I downloaded
| the gcc rpm.  Well, somehow I now compile with png 1.2.5 but I execute at
| png 1.0.9 and my program won't run.  I guess I could do a static compile,
| but I'm not sure how.
| 
| Here is my plan.  Download Gentoo and install it (I have one other
| computer available :) ).  Aren't old computers and Linux wonderful.
| Gentoo has the png and zlib I want and the latest gcc.  So I should be
| set.  What I can't understand is how can Gentoo be a complete Linux setup
| with only 1 214MB CD.  (I'm joking of course)  When Red Hat has 5 600MB
| CDs in it's distribution.  Why is there such a hugh difference?  If I
| wanted to only use one distro (Gentoo) would I be missing something?
| Like Apache or sendmail (or qmail) or ???
| 
| Is Red Hat taking a page from Microsoft?  I mean with the size of the
| install.
| 
| I never heard of Gentoo before.  But, based upon their website (now this
| is very sound research :) ) it seems like a no-nonsense get the work done
| distro.  It seems like they keep up to date with the packages that are
| included and using the RedHat example with Gentoo it seems that I could
| have upgraded from version 7 to version 8 or even 9.
| 
| Thanks again for the help.  I enjoy the rants (especially about security)
| and I'm learning about Linux too.
| 
| 
| I should have Gentoo up and running by the beginning of the week.
| 
| 
| Thanks and God bless,
| 
| sal

hey sal.

i don't think redhat is taking a page from microsoft on this. while redhat
has six cd's half of those are source cd's. while i've never purchased a
microsoft product, but i don't belive they give you the source code to
their product. so that leaves you with three cd's full of binay software
from redhat-with their latest release.

while you could look at three cd's worth of software as bloat, i tend to
appreciate the choices afforded to me by redhat. when you download redhat
you get two modern desktop environment, a compiler suit, two office suites,
a TeX distro, a webserver, two mail servers, an ssh server, image
processing tools.. this list could go for quite a while. 

you can have this for free if you wish, or you can buy it from redhat and
get phone support.  i've called microsoft in the past for customers who
purchased over $600 worth in microsoft software, and the first thing they
asked for was a credit card number. 

also consider that by paying for redhat, you are supporting a company which
employs many programmers whos efforts are returned to the community in the
form of gpl'ed code.

i've done full installs of redhat and take around 4GB of diskspace, redhat
also has an option which allows you to choose what you want installed. they
also offer a minimal install which takes between 400 and 500 mb of
diskspace.

it's good that gentoo has everything you want, but i don't think it's
appropriate to compare a version of redhat that is about 2 years old to the
latest offerings of another disto. 

-- 
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                                               | /"\                      
 john harrold                                  | \ / ASCII ribbon campaign
      jmh at member.fsf.org                    |  X  against HTML mail    
           the most useful idiot               | / \                      
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 "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of
  the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to
  drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship,
  or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the
  people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is
  easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and
  denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country
  to greater danger."
  -- Herman Goering 
     as related to Gustave Gilbert at the Nuremberg trials, 
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