To do or not to do.....

[Chris H]

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Running RH9 at the mo. Tis running quite nicely. However, I keep looking at some cover dvds with words like 'Debian' and 'Slackware' staring out at me.

So shall I back me data up and install one of these beasts over RH?

[jasonlambert]

some would say if it aint broke...

but i would say give debian a go

backup all your personal files/data etc to ANOTHER PC and get a copy on CD as well if possible.

Jason

[Chris H]

Does Debian come with all the usual office suites, browsers etc?

And is it suitable as a desktop?

Ta

[jasonlambert]

yep, comes with KDE, GNOME and a few other window managers, Konqueror as a browser and loads of other stuff.

if you need to install anything extra, eg, open office, just go to a terminal window, and run "apt-get install <NAME>", it will automatically download the software from the debian site, and then install and configure it for you.

It is the easiest package manager ive ever used, and if the software you want to install has dependencies, guess what, it downloads those and installs them as well. No hassle

Jason

[flw]

'Debian' and 'Slackware'

The real question is what do you want to do, that you currently cannot do with your current O.S. ? That will guide your decision to change or not and if a change is need then what to.

[kriss]

Also, give Slackware a try. It might not have as many features as Debian, or Redhat etc, but its one of the old distro's. I think the first version of it was released in '92-93 or something.

Also, it might be a little harder to set up, but I can (allmost) assure you that once you managed to get it up, you will have a much clearer view of what the kernel, xfree, gcc, etc does that make your system go around.

It also has a great package system (Hey, I'm not saying dependancy solver ) with many packages avalible to it.
Updating GNOME to the latest version in also pretty easy thanks to dropline

It has some good doc's too, check them out in Http://www.slackware.com/book

Good luck

[jasonlambert]

I like slackware as a server distro, where i perfer to custom compile most things anyway.

I have slackware 8.1 on my laptop as my "day to day" machine, but for desktop IMO debian beats it. (that may change when i upgrade to slack9.0).

Jason

[Chris H]

'Debian' and 'Slackware'

The real question is what do you want to do, that you currently cannot do with your current O.S. ? That will guide your decision to change or not and if a change is need then what to.

The only thing I can't do with RH9 is write to a usb memory stick

And it won't run Enemy Territory (but that may be my graphoics set up).

Aside from that it does everything I want it to. Rather fond of RH now.