OT: Linux flavors...

[Bill Campbell]

On Wed, Jul 07, 2004, Fairlight wrote:
>On Wed, Jul 07, 2004 at 12:47:59PM -0400, Jay Ashworth may or may not have
>proven themselves an utter git by pronouncing:
>> 
>> Nope.  Avoid 9.1; it's not yet ready for prime time.  My perception of
>> the current concensus is Pro 9.0; that's what we're using with good
>> success.  The only problem I've found so far is that filePro's idea of
>> 'linux' isn't compatible with the SuSE console driver.
>
>I never had a problem.  Dropped right in and console graphics, colours, and
>keymappings worked fine on the one I handled for someone.

We're running 9.1 on a test machine here, and have run into a few
headaches, primarily with devices that aren't fully supported on
the 2.6.x kernels yet (e.g. nvidea graphics).  I'm probably going
to install it in my 5 year old ThinkPad 600 replacing SuSE 9.0
Professional, and see what the wireless support looks like.  We
did try getting the USB 803.11b card I'm using on it now working
on the mule machine, but the kernel tweaks didn't.

>> YOU is *nice*.  The only thing I see problems with concerns non-SuSE
>> kernel modules; these may require manual juggling when YOU updates a
>> kernel unless there's a mechanism I haven't learned yet -- I'm using
>> ndiswrapper to manage a client's laptop's Broadcom wireless card and it
>> didn't track the kernel upgrade from -226 to -231; I had to copy the
>> module manually and depmod.
>
>You mean -proprietar- kernel modules.  That's an issue with any dist, not
>just SuSE.  The problem being that many vendors only seemed to release
>against RH's specific kernel patches, which does one little good indeed.
>But I always advocate avoiding hardware that requires proprietary drivers
>-anyway-.  Even if the support is there, the timing usually sucks in
>comparison to how quickly you need to upgrade for security.

The folks who do Win4Lin seem to have stopped releasing any
prepatched kernels.  They had been doing them as recently as SuSE
9.0 (or was it 8.2).  IHMO, this isn't the smartest thing they
ever did as configuring Linux kernels is almost a lost art since
the modular kernels, first from Caldera, now from SuSE have been
so good at providing the necessary support without having to deal
with building your own kernels.

Bill
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