Right I'm running slackware 9.1 with 2.6.5 kernel and kde 3.2.1. We are considering moving our Novell network to a Linux based network and we are having problems deciding which distro to go with. I personally like slackware but the other guys don't really have an opinion except for the nice little updaters that SuSe and RedHat has. Does anyone have any valid points (none of those "Because it rocks man" answers please) as which one is superior? Thanks.

Maybe you should add gentoo to your list of possibilities.
Suse is very nice, feature rich, gui configs for everything and rarely misses your hardware. Plus, having that nice double sided dvd to install from is good if you can use it, no disk swapping.

But, back to gentoo. Sure, takes a long time to install, but the install process is just follow the step by steps. Once its up and running its got good autodetection, genkernel is a great way to build a kernel as it makes the initrd and bootsplash images for you... Very fast and stable, always got the latest and greatest stuff available with just an emerge -s to find it.

personnaly, i would not go with any rpm distro. All my needs are solved with:
apt-get update && apt-get install apache && apt-get clean
apt-get dist-upgrade.

If you or they are enough experienced i would suggest a bsd but not gentoo(not enough stable for servers). If you are not comfortable with gentoo, you can mess up your system quickly and make it unstable.

slackware has swaret, if you don't go current for your servers, it should be ok.

I am a network admin. This is NOT a stupid question!

What do you want to do? [Expansion on the question follows...] :

--- Do you want an easy to use desktop for the users? For the admins?

--- Are the administrators really familiar with U**x/Linux?

--- Do you want an all-in-one solution or do you want different things for the users, network admins, servers, etc?

--- Are you looking at the Linux Terminal Project for centralized admin of apps, etc?

--- Have you looked at the Novell login project at sourceforge?


A more extensive explanation may stimulate some interesting posts.

Right now all of the systems people are running either slackware or suse for their desktops. Our expertise ranges from moderate to advanced. We have a test cluster up right now running SuSe 9.0 using the High Availability software for the cluster. My view on the whole thing is this: If we use SuSe or Redhat we will have a company backed product that has support if we need it. If we go with Slackware then it will be more configurable than either SuSe and RedHat. No Slackware doesn't have the company back but it makes up for it in the sense that it's been around forever and it has a solid user following, and it works. I've tried several time to get SuSe upgraded to kernel 2.6.4/5 and had problems resulting from the way SuSe does things while on Slackware 9 it was a snap. The way the network will be setup is WindowsXP machines for the users and Linux as the servers will file sharing done by Samba and printing done by CUPS. I have looked at some of the Novell stuff on sourceforge such as the novel client, is there another project that i haven't seen? I'm not familiar with the Linux Terminal Project could you provide some info for that? Thanks for your responses.

Here is the URL for the Linux Terminal project.: http://www.ltsp.org/

The idea is to boot client machines via NIC and download a kernel (very fast - and they have one setup already), X-Windowing, and apps to machines from a Linux server. This allows you to use older hardware in places where you can readily use trerminals. No HD's needed. Everything can be saved to the server on the user accounts.

I have not set it up, but I have seen Jim run these at Linux Conferences. They work well. You might be interested in these. Jim does sell his expertise/support, BTW. That might be a plus.

You mentioned Company support. Yeah, we run RH and have the enterprise server agreement. It does not mean that I LIKE Red Hat !

I ran SuSE (...for 7 yrs, until they ticked me off by removing a lot ofsoftware in SuSE-8.2). Now running Slackware. Is SuSE selling long-term agreements now, or do you still get 90 days? Haven't looked since Novell bought 'em.

"Bo"

I have install LTSP on redhat linux9.0 but how can i access linux desktop through windwos XP terminal. if is there any solution or configuration available with any body. please help me. what i have to do?

you have installed linux terminal server so please help me how you make modification of kernel ? and how can you access the lTSP from Windows XP

Harsha

IME Suse seems to be the ideal kind of distro for a front end, out in amongst the users. Its nice and easy, has lots of configuration through wizards (if thats your thing, or you can console and VI if you wish.) For the most part I'd reckon it'd be great for day to day usage. Wouldn't reccomend it for your servers though. I'm seeing a big difference in performance between slackware and suse 9.1 pro on the same box, nearly a drop of 20%, which I guess is fine given the different markets they're being aimed at. RedHat has never particularly inspired me, to be frank. I've always had hassles in one way or another using an RH distro, but that is just my experience and I know there are a lot of contented RH users.