If a reviewer says, for instance, how well installpkg does what its supposed to - that's objective. If they say how it compares to what they use (aptitude or yum, whatever), are used to, and prefer - that's subjective.

Thank you all very much for the postings.

I agree that a review will always be subjective and that not every review is based on the distros' philosophy.

But still, this is no excuse not to know the very basics like startx or configure xorg.

If these "experts" have reviews quite some distros, they have encountered problems with soft- and hardware on a "daily" base.

Therefore, they should also know where to look for answers ( or at least try ).
These people should be aware of linuxquestions.org. It is one of the largest, and well known, linux community/support/cafe on the Internet. Not to mention the other websites and possibilities ( e.g. IRC channels).

Most of the reviews I have read, have not done so, or tried.

On the other hand, "newbies" have no trouble finding the forums or communities for answers.

This brings me back to the learning curve. I do not expect every linux user to know linux under the hood, but I do expect the basics from distro reviewers.

Learning Linux is not a requirement anymore. Looking at the most common distro reviews, I noticed that only 2 points are of interest:

- Can my grandmother install the distro ?
- Can I install all my needed software from the repository ?

Both answered YES, will give "two thumbs up". If not, it will be "two thumbs down", and a one way ticket to the trash bin.

Those are not looking for a distro which they need to configure themselves. All they are looking for is a Windows withouts its current draw backs ( viruses, mailware, spyware, etc ... ).

From this point of view, I do fully understand the reviewers on their position on Slackware and other "more difficult" ones.

But still, doing reviews on linux distros without pulling up the sleeves when it gets a bit tricky is, imho, a bit sad.

Taking this into account, all is left is then to discuss the graphical interface of the installer, and the amount of software from the repository.

When drawing a conclusion now, I would say " Linux experts ? No ! Distro experts ? YES".

When one is looking for a Windows/MAC alternative, the reviews are pretty good.
When one is looking for Linux, .... How can I now trust a review in the future ever again ?

Thank you all for your comments and interest.

If they would have read a bit more before starting I think their review would have had a higher chance of being a positive one, that's all.

A review needn't answer technical questions. I thought HOWTOs were supposed to do that.

So why bash reviewers for lack of knowledge? Indeed, many reviewers own up to their own defects before reviewing, so it's not like they're misleading other more experienced users.

If you want to gain Linux knowledge by reading reviews, I wish you the best of luck.

Hi,

The review should be written for audience that the author has targeted. Yet that is no excuse for the reviewer not to investigate fully the distribution that he/she is reviewing. The review content should be broad but provide the reader with useful information without overloading one with too much information. The author should provide the reader with a sense of what to expect by the use of the reviewed material, at least to the level of the reviewers experiences or lack of.

The pro/cons of a review can really cause a lot of grieve for some people but I look to some of the comments as to what may possibly be a gotcha or gem of a easter egg.

I think it depends on your audience and the effect you want to give. For example, there are 2 main ways to review, let's say, Ubuntu: as a seasoned Linux user/administrator (even though the 2 roles are now pretty different) and as a complete newbie to Linux. So if you are looking for power and configurability, pure Ubuntu (with Gnome and all the GUI tools) may fall short - particularly if you are a power command line guru or a purist. If you review it from the point of view of someone handed the disk by a friend with a suggestion to give it a go, you may be slightly more forgiving. So reviewing Slackware from the point of view of being a complete newbie and only a casual Windows power user will make Slack look bad.

Hi,

I agree that giving a newbie Slackware and expect a good review would be something near to impossible. Yet, a newbie being honest could provide some insight as to what could or should be polished to help in their endeavor.

The reason behind a lot of OS success or failure is the lack of feedback that is implemented. I'm not saying all feedback should effect a result but that good information can be utilized to improve areas of concern. The documentation for Slackware is good but seeing the feedback here shows the level of documentation is above most new users. Most new users still have the M$ mentality in that do it for me. What's a REAME? Look at the M$ documentation that is shipped now with M$ Vista. I think a 10 year old could and does understand it. Heck, back in the DOS days the information was there for you to read. Sure the best was from IBM but the information provided the platform to expand to what we use today as far as systems. The documentation has slipped somewhat compared to what is available in the after market. Sure, you can spend a lot of money to learn something from the after market books. But if you want something to really succeed then documentation is a must.

We still reference the Slackbook with it's recent revision about 3 years ago. They are working on a rework that will be available mid 2009. By then the book will be dated compared to the releases. It is hard to write for anything that is dynamic so the fault is not the authors.

Slackware has the most simple but at the same time better documented files in /etc ive seen in a distro.

edit: and not only in /etc.

I think the original concept of the OP was "Why are these so called 'experts' so lost?"

The "Why can't I just click" mentality has taken over, and the 'experts' have no clue now. They are stuck in the M$ mentality.

Are they experts? Maybe in their distro of choice. So maybe instead of "Linux Experts", they ought to be "RedHat Experts" or "K/Ubantu Experts".

To call them "Linux Experts" is almost laughable. While they have been using their Linux distro for X amount of years, it most certainly does not make them a Linux Expert.

The forum here is a good example of this. Alot of posters say "(Title) Slackware install is Broke! (Body of message)I've been using 'Bob Linux' for 5 years and know my way around Linux with KDE. But after I installed Slackware, I got dumped into a screen with just text on it. Slackware is obviously broke". By the same token, many Slackware users (myself included), would be baffled by the way other distros work.

Maybe we should stop using the term "Linux Expert" and change it to the real thing, "Distro Expert"

Here's the thing. These people may actually be 'Linux experts' and just not 'Slackware experts'. If someone knows the CLI backwards and forwards, knows the Linux kernel, knows the ins and outs of X, knows Apache, MySQL/Postgresql, PHP, Perl, shell scripting, etc., I think you could definitely call them Linux 'experts' (though there is always stuff to learn, no matter how much you already know). However, Slackware has some Slackware-specific things that may throw them for a loop. They may know all of the software very well, but the actual distro does things differently. For example, Slackware doesn't use SysV init scripts, unlike most other distros (let's not mention the hackish SysV compatibility...it's not really meant to be used). Also, some of the setup utilities are Slackware-specific. For example, netconfig (or rc.inet1.conf), pkgtool/installpkg/removepkg/upgradepkg, xorgsetup? (though xorgconfig and `X -configure` are present), etc. Most of the difficulties 'outsiders' have are Slackware-related, not Linux-related (though this is not always 100% true). I think you can be a 'Linux expert' and have no clue how to use Slackware. Likewise, you could be a 'Linux expert' and have no clue how to use Debian or any other distro. I am not an expert at any distro or at Linux in general (and I'm very, very...very far from it), but I do believe there are some people who know GNU/Linux (and its software) well enough to be considered an 'expert' -- even if they couldn't figure out Slackware without much research (whether they're willing to put in the time to do research or not).

This is by far the best reply I've read on any Linux forum. This is the point I've always made. Learning to use any distribution effectively is different from knowing the generic command line tools available, say in GNU userland or the internal shell commands or even certain programming concepts/libraries in *NIX.