Date: Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:15:46 -0500 From: Martin McCormick <martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: POLL: Linux preferences from FreeBSD users Message-ID: <200907020215.n622Fk0Q022251@dc.cis.okstate.edu>
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Daniel Underwood writes: > QUESTION: Of the various modern Linux distributions, which do you > prefer? and why? I like Debian and ubuntu which is a Debian distribution but that is not to say that other distributions are poorly done. Part of my preference is nothing more than that is what I started out with for a Linux distribution back around 2001 so I am accustomed to it. I like the Debian installation CD because as a computer user who is blind, I use a serial installation console and both the Debian5 CD and ubuntu Server can be easily started in serial mode. I also do not like any distribution that uses a GUI-based installation method unless there is a text-based method which is still available and easy to start. Debian was also one of the first few distributions to be more conservative about security settings. I work for a university and let's say that it is a good place to find out how weak one's settings are. Anybody who finds a hole will not necessarily tell you, but you will unfortunately find out in due time when the complaints start rolling in from all over the world. All the major distributions now are much better about security so this is not as much of a factor as it used to be. As with many things, your mileage will be determined by what you need to do and how well your particular flavor of Linux does it. All Linux versions use the same kernel but some may modify portions of it for special purposes. The distribution known as grml, for instance, has a set of modules in the kernel to support software speech synthesis. I would love to put it on a certain laptop I have but the laptop has other ideas. grml is a flavor of Debian and, on my laptop, the live CD is dead. Ubuntu's live CD also does software speech synthesis for blind computer users, along with an Orca desktop, but it also needs a pretty hefty system just to boot the live CD. That laptop of mine is a 1-GHZ processor and 256 megs of RAM and it still isn't enough. That live CD is also a dead one on that computer. One thing, though, the ubuntu live CD can seem to find the sound card as I hear the bongo drums in the ubuntu bootup, but then the drums fall silent and the screen goes psychedelic as RAM is exhausted and the system looses sanity. That particular psychedelic trip can only be ended by a forced power-down. The only distribution that does work there is something called "Oralux" whose development stopped around 4 years ago. It has software synthesis and it does talk all right, but the sound card can not record sound and it really is too old to be safe or very useful any more. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK Systems Engineer OSU Information Technology Department Telecommunications Services Group
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