[conspire] conspire Digest, Vol 54, Issue 20

[David Fox]

On Nov 21, 2007 3:57 PM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> My own view, by contrast, is that new users should eschew multibooting
> if possible.  If they have time and interest, they should indeed test
> many distributions -- one at a time.

I agree. And if there's another distribution out there that has some
extra functionality, then find a way to get that functionality into
your distribution of choice, or maybe download that distribution to
test things. I often get distributions to kick the tires with and to
help out, but I rarely if ever switch to a new distribution. I've run
a number of distributions in the past, but I run them for years at a
time. Only when something bad happens (such as Mandrake Cooker leaving
my system in such a poor state) do i even consider switching over. The
last time I did this was in mid-2004 and I wen with Mepis (which is
actually good) but I used it as a way to get into Debian. And I've run
Debian ever since (mostly following testing).

One thing about these distributions is that there are a lot of them.
It may be better if there were fewer, so that more development
resources could be leveraged into the best of the available
distributions, instead of J. Random Hacker saying "I'm going to make
my own Linux distribution and be famous" :). Of course, anyone that's
competent can do this, as all the tools are there. As others have
opined on other lists, the  best ideas will likely bubble up.

It's a matter of course that one should also have a couple of spins of
different distributions to use for testing, or rescue situations
(Knoppix, for instance)  but the average user can do just fine with
one or maybe two distributions on line.

> They _say_ they're going to switch back and forth -- and I'm sure they
> mean that when they say it.  However, then that doesn't really happen,
> and it ends up basically being just a waste of time.  Thus, I assume

Quite true. There have been many times that I've wanted to just boot a
live CD to see what it offers, and realize that I can't because I have
too much stuff going on (or at least I used to, especially when my box
was serving mail). I can't just go off and reboot into another
dstribution.

Faster machines and enough available memory make it much easier
because you can run these things inside of a VM. But to play, you have
to have a beefy box. At least AMD 64 wtih about 2 gigs of RAM :).

Or, if you have a couple of spare machines, run different distributions on them.


> As a reminder:  This Saturday following Thanksgiving Day, _no_ CABAL
> meeting, as Deirdre and I will be at LosCon.

Aha. OK Bruce we need to find an alternate distribution point. That is
no problem in that I can burn and keep the distros for sometime,
probably until the next CABAL meet.


>
> > DAVE, please do bring it and the other things I asked you to download
> > when i pick you up won't be fast and I'll probably void my warranty

Strange quoting style. I think that was Bruce.


> I'm quoting the above mainly so there will be a fighting chance that
> "Dave" might see it!

Yes, seen it. :)