Re: Totally Off-Topic (it's that Linux newbie again)

On Mon, 10 Feb 2003 12:23:09 +0000, Norman Dunbar wrote:

> Hi Howard,
>
> thanks for that - filed in my 'useful Linux tips' folder.
>
> Regards,
> Norman.
>
> PS. What makes RedHat 8 better than Mandrake 9 then ?

It lacks some of Mandrake's nice 'features' (such as Windows partitions having their own icon on the desktop, or supermounting of CD-ROMS). It doesn't have such a nice SAMBA client tool as Mandrake, so (at the moment) connecting to Windows shares are a royal pain in the command line.

But it has Bluecurve. Finally: no more worrying in Gnome about "I wonder whether KDE would have been better" or vice versa: Bluecurve combines them both into one interface, mostly identical regardless of which one you choose. I am reminded of the line from Absolutely Fabulous: "I don't want more choice, I just want nicer things!!!!". Substitute in "operating systems" for 'things' there, and you get the idea.

Importantly, it has FINALLY! a decent menu system. I never could work out why, in Suse 7.1 and 7.3, open office, Koffice, Star Office and God knows whatelse would appear at random moments on any damn menu they appeared to fancy. Now they appear under one called 'Office'. My sense of tidiness appeased, I am a happy man.

At the end of the day, they are both Linux (though with different kernels out of the box, which is annoying). But Red Hat looks rather less gimmicky than Mandrake, and I trust it more. Mandrake always seems to me to (on their website and its constant pleading for money) to be threatening to go bust. Not what I'd want to tie my ship to.

And Red Hat also seems to have sorted out the mystery of the anti-aliased fint, and provided some that actually look rather decent. Mandrake looks OK as well, but a bit cheaper.

I'm sure it's all subjective. But Bluecurve I like.

Regards
HJR Received on Mon Feb 10 2003 - 06:27:01 CST