Hi. I'm running Redhat 9, but am wary of the future moves of Redhat (free version to be 'replaced' (if that's the correct word) by Fedora.

I'm looking at possible distributions to move to (I would rather not have to pay for some obscure reason :-) ).

Mandrake seems to present the smallest problem if I change from Redhat, but as Mandrake is also a commercial company, I would worry about that distribution also becoming non-free in the future.

I'm personally not too worried about having to configure files by hand. I have two decades experience as a unix user, have performed limited system adminstration (including operating system install and network configuration) on my desktop Solaris machine, and have taught shellscript programming in the past. Typically, I mainly work in the shell, though my non programming (and non-shell using) partner also will use the machine.

I would like a good package manager. But, at present I use apt-get and synapatic, which is why switiching to Debian seems a good choice.

Hardware is the only worry. But, I'm running an ABIT NF7-M with nforce2 chipset, and geforce4 onboard graphics. Surely that wouldn't be a problem for Debian? As it is, Redhat doesn't seem to handle the onboard video well, and 3D OpenGL doesn't work (glxgears crashes X). Though, I have another machine with onboard geforece2 graphics that works perfectly. When I did a trial mandrake installations, glxgears worked fine.

I don't use much in the way (as far as I'm aware) of redhat configuration tools. While graphical network configuration was useful, I'm confident I could use files.

I have some USB hardware (mouse, and more importantly scanner), but since I'm using the (old) stock redhat 9 kernel, surely the lastest Debian would again have no problems?

We configure network connections and go online using KPPP - so nothing fancy there.

I use (and subscribe to) wineX, but note that they have a debian package available for download, again, no problem.

Given the description of my situation above, what would people recommend? Any gotcha's.

Cheers,

Ross-c

You'd be fine with Debian and in fact with your background you'll enjoy it much more than RH because there is so much you can do with Debian in the way of mods. Your NForce stuff may only be catered for by the testing versions of kernels so you would probably have to go straight to Sid.

Thanks for the feedback.

I'll be able to check kernel compatibility with a trial install. But, does Debian not use a stock kernel? Are Debian kernels modified like the RH ones are?

Thanks in anticipation,

Ross-c

Debian goes by flavours as you probably know, the stable version (ie verified stable by the hierarchy) is Woody which uses the 2.2.2 or 2.4.18 kernel, then you have unstable and testing versions. I personally have Woody but with the 2.4.22 kernel. I am relatively new to Linux and Debian having only used it for a year. There can be problems mixing stable with unstable apps but given that 2.4.22 kernel is regarded as stable by the developers I was willing to take the risk. I think that Debian probably has big advantages in that it is relatively simple to upgrade via apt without serious problems. eg set the apt sources.lst to point to unstable do apt-get update and then apt-get upgrade and it pulls all the stuff off the net. Another big factor for me has been that on install you can decide what services you want and only install what you need. eg on this pc I don't need pcmcia so I didn't load them and also don't use isdn so didn't load those either. If you don't want a gui don't have it. These were the main reasons I went Debian. My first encounter was with Mandrake and although the install is good I found it very cumbersome and slow - a bit like I would expect an aircraft carrier to handle. Debian is reallyy quick and in comparison to M$ Windows is very fast especially the Web side which I cannot explain.