comparison between redhat, SUSE, fedora etc
 

Hi,
There are lot of linux distributions available. How to choose among them ? Any comparisons available ?

regards
vinoj

Forget comparisons ... Just go with Debian. Pay no attention to the naysayers and prosyletizers who'll be here soon.

There might even be a prize available to you for posting the 10,000th such thread.

Basically, try some distros and choose one that YOU like or suits YOUR needs.

Redhat, SuSE and Fedora all use the RPM package manager. Others, such as Debian and Ubuntu use Deb packages and the apt package manager. Debian and its derivatives are often seen as having superior package management.

Most of the distros only differ in a few areas, such as package management, config utilities, default applications installed and default settings.

As I said, try some and see what you like. I suggest trying Fedora Core 4, Suse, Ubuntu, and (If you are feeling brave...) Slackware.

I hope this helps
--Ian

I use Debian at home and Redhat at work. I love my job, but I HATE having to install anything on the systems there. RPM is constantly fighting with me to prevent updates/installs.

Apt (or aptitude now) just works. There are some occasional dependency issues, but in general, it just works.

Debian can be a little difficult for beginners to cope with, although I think the installation has improved dramatically over the previous version.

Ubuntu and mepis are supposedly very good for beginners, but are still based on Debian (so they're rock solid and run apt). I can't make any real claims about them myself, because once I installed Debian for the first time I refused to switch. Debian has everything I want.

Read some forums, do some research, find something that fits what your looking for. And for God's sake, stay away from RPMs! :p

Most distros differ in terms of features i.e. package managers, installation routine, default desktop etc. The basics are the same so regardless of distro, you will still learn a lot about Linux if you are willing to spend some time tinkering with your distro of choice. As for package management my point of view differs from the above. Both rpm based and debian based distros have good package managers and if you stick to the packages made for your distro, then you won't face any major problems.

I find that Debian has too many packages for the beginner. What are they up to now, 40,000? That's way too many to wrap your head around. As well, not every program can be used intuitively, since they don't come out of the cookie-cutter the same way Windows applications do. That's where a nice small disto like Ubuntu really shines. I find I don't use even half the programs in Ubuntu, never mind Debian. Debian is overkill.

as sugested above, try several distros and see what one works best for you.

i have used the following and the results are as follows:

RH9 loved it and enjoyed the ease of setting it up and the learning curve was less then some of the other distros at the time.

draw back is that it is no longer supported and is out dated.

Mandrake 10. hated it. it was slow, had bad performance, had limited hardware detection, and took over a week to get connected for updates and the updates at e the OS as bad as a MS service pack update can. to the point that with my limited skills at the time in linux i had to format and reinstall.

FC1 was as easy as RH9 to install, but lacked several bits of hardware support i needed for my laptop. was also heavier on the hardware took up more system resources.

Debian 3.0 would not install on several of my system so i avoided it for a long time. the problem was the bottom 2in was NOT displaying on my monitors. be it the laptop, my old work station, or my game box. just did not work properly for me.

SuSe 9.0 took forever to install, did not have all of the hardware suport i needed, but other then that it was ok. still very heavy on the system resources too.

those were the first set of distros i messed with a few years back. i ended up running Debian testing (sarge at the time) and after a very large learning curve i have to say i like it better then any other distro i have worked with.

others that i have worked with that i like.

CentOs 4.x
SuSe 9.3 (and 10.0)
FC 4


For a newbie the nice thing about SuSe is that it is very bloated, but as a results it just works out of the box. very easy. You do need a rather powerful system to run SuSe 10 but it will run nice, look good, and networks extreemly easy with MS in a LAN as it has some GUI tools i have ONLY seen in SuSe and no other distros.

the FC line is also good as it is much like SuSe in it is a RPM distro, but has a much shorter life span (18 months IIRC) so you can suffer upgrades more often.

CentOS is just RHE (red hat enterprise) for free. so if you are looking for a powerful server distro then that is the way to go.

Once you wrap your head around linux i would sujest going with Debian Testing as for me it is just so much simpler and more powerful then any other distro i have worked with.

i am afraid of gentoo and slackware as i just still dont feel i have the skills to work with pure sorce without some kind of packet manager like yum or apt to help with resolving dependancy hell.

It's kind of like choosing a car--in fact, I think cars have more choices than we face with Linux distros.

For the beginner, I say grab any one of the free distros and dive in. After some time with it, you'll know better what you are looking for.

Did someone already mention distrowatch?

Me? Ubuntu
YMMV

1. Use search, query for "which distro" or "which distribution" and read the countless comparisons, reviews, and recommendations (in other words, it's been asked ad infinitum, you asked a question which is asked here EVERY day by people who are too lazy and demand to be spoon-fed despite their asking the same question everyone else does, the info is here already)
2. Read the stickies
3. Check out distrowatch
4. Try several distributions. Pick one.

As someone else mentioned: Which car should I buy?

Same issue. There are many cars, many reviews out there, and heck, the specs and photos of cars are already readily available. Do some research and pick one. You can guess from my username which car I am partial to. Likewise, you can guess from my profile which distributions I run (although I am running CentOS on one box while learning asterisk and it's already in production. Once I have a good handle on asterisk I will be building my own on SuSE, Mandriva, or kubuntu because I HATE Redhat and CentOS is spawn of Redhat).