Tech by PC

I was getting excited about the imminent release of Debian Lenny, but it has been delayed again. There are some 200 outstanding release critical bugs left to squash before it can be released. I appreciate the thoroughness put into Debian releases, which is why I use it myself. Some flavors I’ve used are as follows: Slackware, RedHat, Gentoo, Debian, OpenSUSE, Red Hat Enterprise, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server & Desktop. I’m no Linux zealot, but Linux does have a place in enterprise and small business.

I prefer Debian because it is so thoroughly tested, it’s updates and security patches are simple, and it is the best documented flavor out there. I mainly use Linux in a server environment although I have run it as my primary desktop for many years both at home and work. My professional linux experience includes running several HPC clusters and large crunch machines which process large analysis jobs. At work I am currently centered on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server. The business wants to have paid maintenance even though I’ve never taken advantage of it. Part of the theory is that they may need it if I were ever to leave.

A brief summary of the flavors I have used is as follows.

Slackware

Slackware was my first Linux distribution. I started using it in the fall of 1993 when I spent a few days downloading and creating 3.5″ floppy disks in order to install the system. My hard drive was ~320MB which I later upgraded to ~720MB. I had a Slackware system directly connected to the Internet from 1993 until 1997.

Slackware, being my first distribution was awesome. I think every computer geek’s first experience with installing Linux is either awesome or telling of how incompetent he is. Within days I had the X Windows system working along with a browser – and browsing at the time was relatively new.

Red Hat

After my Slackware machine’s CMOS battery exploded ruining the IDE controller card I started building new computers, one of which was a Red Hat machine. I installed Vanderbuilt (4.1) and was rather disappointed that even a site like Slashdot could crash the browser. I moved up to Hurricane (5.0) when that came out and was satisfied somewhat. I continued upgrading through the 7 series but was disappointed when I couldn’t get in on the IPO. I kept using it through version 9 with an occasional dabble in Debian. Then Red Hat did the unthinkable and stopped releasing a free version.

Red Hat’s biggest failing is its reliance on the GUI which increased with every release. Everything that I wanted to do had to be configured through the GUI, and if I did any configuration manually I would lose those changes as soon as I loaded up the GUI configuration tool to make other changes such as configuration of my desktop environment. Very frustrating. In spite of all that upgrading, my primary Linux systems through this time were Slackware and Debian.

Gentoo

I started getting into Gentoo mixed with some Debian for production in 2003. Gentoo became my desktop at work and at home for a time. I even installed it on my Insprion 8600 laptop.

Gentoo’s strength comes in its infinite customization. In a normal install every single piece of the operating system is downloaded from source and compiled specifically for the hardware on your particular system. In theory this makes the operating system optimized for speed or memory or processor stepping, or anything else you choose. In reality much more time is spent compiling than is ever saved through efficiency of the resulting binaries. In fact, if you don’t know what you are doing you could easily end up with a less efficient system.

Gentoo’s secondary strength is its teaching ability. In 2003 I was looking for something that wasn’t all GUI and allowed some manual configuration. Gentoo took that wish to the next level and gave me every option I ever wanted. I eventually gave it up because I just got too tired of recompiling things. It isn’t a system that you can rely on for production because a small recompile can change dozens of other things requiring many other recompiles before the system will become useful again. I consider it more of a bleeding edge linux distribution and the perfect one for new linux geeks to cut their teeth on.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

I started using RHEL in 2003 in a cluster of Dell 2650s. I stayed with them for three years, the life of the lease, and for the most part didn’t have any problems with the operating system. On the other hand I had plenty of problems with the hardware. Dell’s PERC was not compatible, and we suffered a year with the nodes crashing every time disk load became high until we finally convinced them to send a new controller. I reconfigured the system and it worked like a champ for the remander of its existence.

The biggest cons I saw with RHEL was its insistance upon the GUI. I don’t mind the GUI, but in a cluster environment I kept X from loading as much as possible. When simple configuration or software installation requires the GUI I get frustrated. In a related problem I would perform some configuration manually which would automatically revert as soon as I brought up a GUI configuration tool. The update system was also clunky. They sell a product that enables multiple systems to update without having to re-download the patches, but we didn’t pay for that. I set something up with NFS to facilitate the updates, but it just seemd to want to update constantly. The pros were a rock solid system that never had dependency problems.

SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES)

I started using SLES in 2006 shortly after version 10 was released and after I replaced the RHEL cluster. I had tested it before putting it into production, and had used OpenSUSE occasionally in the past, so I knew what I was getting into. I also did some research into the Novell/Microsoft deal and from my company’s perspective saw this as a benefit. Microsoft’s financial endorsement of a commercial Linux distribution is important for interoperability. I have never regretted making that decision.

SLES is much better at allowing me to make manual configuration changes, and I have only a couple times even seen the GUI configuration tool since it just isn’t needed. It is much more manageable and practical for a cluster. There is an automatic update setup that works great, and I’ve never had a problem with it.

Debian

Debian has become my OS of choice. My first experience with it was sometime around 97 or 98 while I was struggling with Red Hat and dissatisfied with the progression of Slackware. I’ve used it off and on and now use it for my public webserver and some home servers.

Debian’s biggest strength comes from its high quality control. It is extremely reliable and doesn’t change too often, which is probably why it seems to get the best documentation of all the distributions. What works today will likely work tomorrow, and that can’t be said for many of them, especially Gentoo. (I have to put a side note in here that Gentoo’s forums are extremely valuable.) Debian is also the quickest operating system to install from a bare metal system to fully configured. Debian is the basis for other popular operating systems such as Ubuntu, and Ubuntu smartly keeps the best parts of Debian.

Others

In no way is this an exhaustive list of the Linux distributions I have tried. I could try to list them, but I would probably never even come close to catching them all. Another to note is CentOS which takes the open source packages from RHEL and recompiles them. It is a good OS to use at home if you have to support RHEL at work and don’t want to buy your own RHEL license or break any intellectual property laws. Similarly OpenSuSE is what I use at home because I support SLES at work.

I write all of this because Debian Lenny needs some more testing. I downloaded it late last week and installed it on a system over the weekend. I didn’t find any problems, but the system needed to be redeployed this week as a Windows box, so it has been reloaded and didn’t get a thorough test.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 10:12 pm and is filed under Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.