[TAG] ISP email goes down in flames
Adam Engel
bartleby.samsa at verizon.net
Wed Nov 16 23:54:50 MSK 2005
On Nov 15, 2005, at 9:27 PM, Mike Orr wrote:
> On 11/15/05, Adam Engel <bartleby.samsa at verizon.net> wrote:
>> Now that you've brought it up...I'm looking for a new distro,
>> possibly.
>> My nine-year-old Dell Inspiron is no longer inspired or even "on,"
>> so
>> I'm looking for a basic no frills desktop for work -- vim, Open
>> Office,
>> Firefox, Thunderbird, Abiword on top of KDE or GNOME or both -- plus
>> WindowMaker, FVWM etc. for mood swings, and "play" -- trying to learn
>> Shell Scripting and Perl, and Networking at the "hobbyist's" leveliti,
>> i.e. just for play, not pay or necessity like the basic
>> word-processing
>> tools and email/web connection. For me, the difference between one
>> distro and another is basically the install. I was using Redhat 6 for
>> a while, then two years ago received SuSE 9.0 as a xmas gift and was
>> happy not to have spend days with HOWTOSs and manuals trying to get
>> everything up and running. YaST took care if the whole deal in a few
>> hours. But after the initial installation, I found the whole package
>> management system a hindrance rather than a helper, and prefer to
>> just
>> download the source files when I need an upgrade or new application.
>> he
>> That said, it seems like the real difference for me between one
>> distro
>> and another would be the package management system for installation
>> and
>> quick jump-start (partition, connectivity etc.) of a new system.
>> o
>> I was thinking of switching to Debian, which I'm somewbhat familiar
>> with because the Mac OS uses DEB rather than RPM, an earlier TAG
>> discussion regarding Gentoo pointed out some problems I was not aware
>> of. Also, there's the above-mentioned Mandriva, Slackware, etc. I
>> frequently go to the Debian site for updates/info etc. which is a
>> plus
>> for them -- I think. But then, I mostly go to GNU for upgrades or new
>> apps, so again, I'm wondering what the real difference is beyond the
>> Deb or RPM package managements systems. Once the system is installed,
>> I'll have to stick with its recommendations and dependencies,(for,
>> say, a Kernel upgrade) or download a source file and try not to mess
>> up.
>>
>> Sage advice, anyone?
>
> What about unsage advice? :) The main differences between distros are:
> - the install program
> - the runlevel layout (/etc/init.d/* and all that stuff)
> - the location of configuration files and runtime data (heavily
> modified from upstream or not)
> - how many packagee are included (as many as possible or a
> highly-tested subset)
> - binary packages or compile-it-yourself
> - the graphical front-ends for sysadmin tasks
>
Yeah, this is what I found with SuSE 9.0. It was great two years ago,
because I hadn't been doing Linux for a couple of years and it helped
me a) crash through Win2000 to regain control overo my computer and b)
set up a basic system from which to work. Also, I hadn't been exposed
to KDE or GNOME before, and coming from the old WindowMaker/FVWM
winmanagers it blew me away. But after a while, I came back to the
command line where life moves faster.
> I've switched between Debian, Gentoo, and Fedora. (And Slackware
> years ago.) It's mainly a job of reinstalling the packages you use,
> and porting your customizations in /etc . Since most of the software
> is third-party (konsole, vim, Firefox, and Thunderbird for me),
> they'll work exactly the same. Except when they don't. (That is, if
> any default configuration settings are different.) Maybe the new
> defaults are "good enough" and you can live with them. You can delete
> the stub /home directory and mount your old one, but watch out for
> programs that are such a different version they "upgrade" your config
> file in a backward-incompatible way. You'll have to synchronize the
> user IDs and group IDs if they're different (see the manpages for
> "passwd", "group", "chown", "chgrp", "vipw", "vigr"). I mount the old
> system read-only as /mnt/DISTRO for several weeks so I can quicklytyou
> can "chroot /mnt/DISTRO /bin/bash" in a konsole tab to run a
> command in its old environment.
I usually create a phony user in the /home directory and practice all
the sysadm stuff on "him" before I apply any software or rules to my
own directory.
Don't spend much time thinking about the installer because you'll only
> use it once. One frustration with Fedora is it has a nice elaborate
> installer, but then you want to run one of its features again and it's
> an "installer only" thing. I had to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and I
> saw the comment at the top saying it was generated by pyxf86config. I
> thought, "Wow, a new configurator, and it worked pretty well the
> firstou
> time. Let's try it." But pyxf86config does not exist, so I guess
> it's only on the install disk. In Gentoo, the same commands you use
> to configure initially are the ones you'll use later, so even though
> it takes an extra hour or two it's worth the investment.
I guess that's what I was talking about. All installers are
third-party and I'm not as
interested in learning how they work as I am in learning the real
"X-files" configs. But I figurei
once the system is in place, I'll deal with it as is and make changes
relevant to that status from then on.
> DEB and RPM are just different ways to do the same thing.
> They'veuborrowed so much from each other that I doubt there's much
> different
> in features. With DEB each package contains a configuration
> directory; with RPM it's all in one configuration file. RPMs come in
> both binary and source flavors, and you use the 'rpm' tool for both.
> DEBs are binary only and use the 'dpkg' tool to install, or 'dpkg-deb'
> to inspect/manipulate the package. Source files (unless it has
> changed recently) use the original upstream source tarball (trivially
> renamed) plus a patch file, and a family of commands starting with
> 'dpkg-source'. I find the 'dpkg' command-line options more intuitive
> than the 'rpm' ones ( '-i' for install and upgrade, vs rpm '-U' for'
> upgrade; '-s' for summary, '-l' to list matching package names,
> '--force-THIS' to do something unsafe). 'rpm' has sixty-six options
> to wade through, but it does group them logically (all query options
> go with '-q'). Of course, most people nowadays use a front end like
> 'apt' or 'yum' or something to automatically download and install in
> one step.
> t
Yeah, that's why I'm leaning towards Debian. There's a lot to learn
about RPM and I'm not really that interested beyond "rpm -ivh Foo.rpm
" etc. With the MacOS, if you want to be a "gooufd camper' you'll use
Fink to install all your stuff, which essentially means learning DEB.
Again, I'd rather spend time on Linxu/Unix per se than proprietary
stuff.
> If you like Debian, take a look at Ububtu anessd Kubuntu.
>
I've heard about these, especially Ububtu. I think I'll try Debian
first and see how it works. I'm a slow learner with this stuff, and
right now I'm trying to learn general shell scripting and perl (and
networking) so I can apply it generally.
> As for installing your own software, you don't have to use the
> distro's packages if you don't want to (besides the small number of
> 'essential' packages). If I'm using a brand-new version or beta and I
> don't want to wait for the package, I just install from source into
> /usr/local. In practice there's only a small number of programs I'm
> so particular about, so it doesn't get unwieldly. I often use Python
> betas and locally install all Python modules I use, and just leave
> /usr/bin/python alone for the distro to use. GNU 'stow' is a "poor
> man's package manager" that's easy to use, and I'd highly recommend it
> if you do local installs. You install your program into
> /usr/local/stow/PACKAGE-VERSION, and run 'stow' to create symlinks in
> /usr/local/bin, etc. You can even keep several versions in
> /usr/local/stow simultaneously and switch between them easily. The
> alternatives are to make DEBs or RPMs out of them (time-consuming to
> learn how), or use a feature like 'dpkg-equivs' (?) to tell the
> package manager you have FOO installed elsewhere. But it's easier to
> just leave the package manager ignorant.
>
Yeah, I'd rather install into /usr/local or even /opt than deal with
the "Systeem" but I definitely
would like to check out Stow. Maybe it could serve as a "uhappy
medium."
You've given me a lot of useful stuff to go on. Thanks, Mike, I
appreciate your taking the time.
Adam
-
> Mike Orr <sluggoster at gmail.com> or <mso at oz.net>
>
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