Re: Prefered Linux Dialect...

[Martin Rowe <martin@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Monday 02 May 2005 20:28, Peter Grace wrote:
> Don,
>
> I've actually run ltsp off of debian pretty successfully.  One problem
> I've noticed is that debian is always behind the times (which is
> excellent in a business stability sense, but not so good in the
> innovation department).  

Hey, I'm sure Sarge[1] really *will* be released this year <g> I've one 
server I ended up upgrading to unstable (no testing at that time) to get 
Samba working reliably (Woody[2] had issues with Samba over token ring)

> LTSP is one of those projects that I'd happily 
> donate tons of money to; it's (imho) one of the more innovative methods
> of reusing older commodity hardware.

I'm quite intrigued by the Ndiyo project, recently covered by the BBC: 
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4496901.stm> for very low cost 
computing, though that differs from LTSP's aim to reuse old hardware.

> That being said, I usually stick to debian testing for servers and
> debian unstable for my desktop at home; I'm happy that linux is finally
> getting to the point where the desktop is within reach of the common
> user.

My desktops run Unstable, though I plan on moving them to Ubuntu when I get 
the time. I have it running on my laptops and on some family members PCs, 
and it's great. All the benefits of Debian but without the time required to 
get stuff working as you want it. They do a PPC version and Canonical 
provide paid for support - Ubuntu on iSeries would be very nice.

Regards, Martin
[1] For those not familiar with Debian, their next release, called Sarge[3] 
has been imminent for a *long* time. Debian is a huge distribution, 
supporting 11 cpu architectures and having the largest number of prebuilt 
packages of any Linux distribution. Somewhat like iSeries devotees, Debian 
developers (a voluntary body of around 1000 members worldwide) are very 
passionate about their system, and only shipping a new release when it's 
ready is the way it is - period ;)
[2] The current release is Woody, available since July 2002. Absolutely rock 
solid, but becoming increasingly difficult to add new software to.
[3] All Debian releases are named after characters in the Toy Story movie. 
The bleeding edge development version, or Unstable (as opposed to the 
released, or Stable, version) is called Sid for the boy next door that kept 
breaking things. The name was 'backronymed' to Still In Development :)
-- 
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