[Lilux-help] Distro is not as important as we all think

[Patrick Kaell]

The distro is not as important as we all think. Much more important are 
the applications and the whole environment. For example, I recreate on 
every Un*x platform I work my favorite environment (shell profile, shell 
aliases, window manager settings, etc). I even compile the GNU ls 
(because of the colours) on every *BSD and commercial Unix I use.

In fact I use Yellow Dog Linux and MacOS X (also a real Unix) as a dual 
boot solution on my iBook (Slackware is x86 only), Solaris 8 on my 
SparcStation 5 and use RedHat and AIX at work. And guess what? They all 
look and *feel* the same. I have installed the same tools, window 
manager, applications, have the same settings and so on. I don't use the 
distro's defaults.

My opinion: It may be difficult to find your optimal distro, but finding 
your optimal editor or script language is far more important. As long as 
you are *using* your computer instead of tweaking, upgrading and 
installing all the time, the distro is not important at all.

You have extremely many choices: the base OS (*BSD, Linux), the distro, 
the shell (bash, tcsh, ksh, zsh, ...), the editor (vi, emacs), the vi 
derivative (nvi, vim, elvis, ...), the emacs implementation (GNU Emacs, 
uemacs, xemacs, jed, ...), the graphical editor (nedit, scite, gedit, 
bluefish, xvi, ...), the windowmanager (twm, fvwm, olvwm, icewm, 
windowmaker, afterstep, ion, wm2, blackbox, fluxbox, openbox, ...), the 
desktop environment (CDE, KDE, Gnome, xfce, ...) and so on.

For instance, here is a good page comparing the window managers:

http://xwinman.org

Simply take the first distro you can get. Even if it is not the optimal 
one it will not be bad. You have to use Linux, read articles, try out 
many things before you find your optimal environment.

By the way, here are my favorites:

Shell:                   bash, (also like tcsh)
Window Manager:          icewm, (also like window maker)
File Manager (&Desktop): ROX http://rox.sourceforge.net , very speedy!
Programming Language:    C
Script Language:         bash, gawk
Graphical Tools:         xv, xpaint, bitmap, gimp
Vector Graphical Tool:   xfig
Text Processing:         LaTeX (yes, still better than all the WYSIWYG)
Text Editor:             nedit, (also like scite)
vi derivative:           elvis
WWW Browser:             mozilla, dillo (very speedy!!!)
Mail Client:             mozilla
Small Database:          grok
Calendar:                plan


Patrick Kaell