Hi,

What differentiates the different distributions? What makes Slackware a Slackware, a Red Hat a Red Hat, and a Mandrake a Mandrake. Aren't they using the same kernel? And any distro can just compile the programs that they like?

Esael

Its basically whoever put it together to make it a complete OS. Some modify and hack the code, some add different packages than others may have. Some have different means of installing packages..

Check out www.distrowatch.com for comparisons on many different distro's.

Mandrake adds their own GUIs and tools to interface with a lot of command line stuff to make it "mandrake". Slackware puts no nasty gui on top of real config files, that makes it slackware.

And so on, just as Drew said, distrowatch will have alot of the answers for you. Plus a lot of cool icons for you as well

Cool

Well lets see... first this guy in Northern California put together a distro called soft-landing, which crashed a lot, go figure, and then this deadhead from North Dakota, Patrick, fixed everything, stuffed it through a blender, included every possible piece of software that you would ever want and took a nod from his friend J.R. Bob Dobbs and called it Slackware. Everyone else called it bloated and messy, it was about 130MB at the time. This was 1992/93, people were stingy about their disk space and being able to still play Prince of Persia on their DOS partition.

Then a joker named Ian came along, from Northern... er, Purdue, I'm struggling here, and thought Patrick's distro put together all alone was alright, but that world+dog could do a better job of it, so he got a couple hundred thousand friends together, created a newer packaging system relying on this cetral database of whatever was current where any Joe could become the official "package maintainer" of some random project, that of course some other guy was building, and then Ian decided on the most inventive name to date, he combined his and his wife Deb's name: Debian. Creative eh?

Then this guy from North, yeah, you guessed it, Carolina, Marc, or was it Bob? anyway, the one got together with the other, who was from North Boston offhand, and decided to make some money since that hippy Patrick and that Commie Ian were giving the goods away. came along, saw the both of them and figured... hey we'll make a 3rd packaging system, taking all of the merits of the other two and none of the flaws. Well, they didn't get that, but they did convince Wall Street that they were worth a lot of money, as well as most of the rest of the planet. RPMs, RedHat Package Manager...

Sometime before or around this interest in RedHats, these Germans, sorry, middle Germany here, took Slackware and decided that it wasn't quite bloated enough, so they stuffed in support for about a dozen romance languges, and ever utility they could wheedle into compiling on a base Slackware install, and then called it SuSe, oddly enough the smallest name of the bunch for a distro that was the first to release on a DVD it was so big!

Last, a few years later, but not quite off the bus, came along a coupld of nutty frenchmen, I don't know if they're from the North of France, but I suspect them of having slipped North to Amsterdam, who decided SuSe wasn't quite bloated enough... let's not just stuff in everything, lets have it run KDE by default and a bunch of other things, make it foolproof and ready for the home user so it'll break a lot, and compile it so it has to run on a pentium or better! Oh, and lets base it all on RedHat, they seem to be making a lot of money.

(ed. Note: wild inacuracies caused by a lack of coffee in the house)

In essence everything is basically derived from Slackware, the oldest surviving distribution and the only one really worth mentioning from its era anyway. Kind of surprising really considering that it still has something like 8% of the linux market. RedHat has nearly half, and corporate offices worldwide, hundreds of employees, as does SuSe, and to a much lesser but similar degree Mandrake. Debian by default has a hundred thousand employees, but none of them can seem to agree on anything and they all hang out by the watercooler too much anyway.

Patrick has 1 other guy helping him out. He did have three, but his layoffs were harsh from the fallout of viet.com.

Cheers,

Finegan

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That's pefect Fin. Is any of it true, or are you now starting chapter 13 of your Fiction Novel, titled "Linux through the ages"?

Very good stuff man, I especially liked the end.

If you are in need of a cup of Joe, and near Seattle, toss me a quick PM, and I'll buy.

Great story

lol. entertaining, finegan. i would buy you a coffee too if i was around your area.

Uh he's first on my list when he's in the Austin area..

Actually, I'm leaving for Tennessee this Tuesday, maybe I should swing by Fin's to buy him a cup of coffee there and he can finally insert my direct connection via kneecap to LQ....

It's a battle to buy Fin a cup of Joe

Awww... Finny feels the love, between you guys and all of the wireless jokers I think I've got a cup of joe everywhere in the continental and now... Singapore? Is that right Tundra? Damn fine coffee from the mountainous pacific... who knows, maybe the state department will re-process my application from, er '97?

So Trick, is this vacation I read about on your page? Droppin' in to do a spot of nothing with the fam? I hope it treats you alright. Where in TN? Atlanta may just be a hop out of the way.

However, to keep this thread on topic, some free association. Here's what comes to mind when I think of the distro names:

Slackware: Masochism breeds competence.
RedHat: Corpadverticus
Mandrake: Cotty candy goodness
SuSe: Big fat lizard sunning itself on a Rock
Debian: Damn Commies
TurboLinux: sushi
Connectiva: Festival!!!
Tomsrtbt: Swiss Army Knife


Cheers,

Finegan

Hey everyone knows the best coffee is italian! If you doubt that then come over here and try it!
-NSKL

I thought Seattle was the best? I may just have to get orders over there to give it a shot then

Actually right now I am very undecided, but looking at maybe Rota, Spain.

Cool

I had a friend that lived on the base at Rota; he said it was the usual sort of nasty relationship with the locals kind of base... but that was the late 80's and he was 12 then so things have probably changed.

I worked in coffee houses, and not McCoffee (nickname for starbucks), but some really obnoxious places that I couldn't even afford to go to. NSKL has a point, the Italians are hard to argue with. Seattle tends to take after the french, that due to some trade issues with Italy a few centuries ago decided to start burning beans instead of roasting them. If you burn them, you don't have to use as much grounds to make the same ammount of coffee.

Wait, this is a Slackware thread, how in the heck did I end up on coffee?!?!?!

Gergh...

Finegan

ha ha ha ha, that's cool info about the burning of beans...

I think the bottom line on what makes each distro it's own distro is the "proprietary" (for lack of a better word) software they make for their distro. Some make it fast, some make it eye candy, but each program makes it a little more 'different'.

Cool

Actually I won't be too far away, Kingsport, just about 45 minutes north of Knoxville..
Going to relax and actually study while I'm up there cause I finally plan on taking my Solaris exams next month sometime hopefully so I can get out of my HellHole of a job now..

yup, singapore it is... lol. take your pick: spinellis or starbucks, or even the local coffeeshop. given your talents, the state dept should let ya come in and run the entire country's clusters! from the way things have been going, i think we're in need of a few real experts here...
then again, you're most likely better off drinking the coffee i'm going to buy u... lol!

italy and seattle vying for top cup eh? gotta go and try it out...

good luck for the solaris exams tricky. if u become the next chief of Sun, don't forget us! ;-) (and don't let the stocks drop like hail...)