[SUMMARY] Solaris-like distro? (long)

["Thien Vu" <thien_vu@hotmail.com>]

Thanks to all the responses. I wanted to wait awhile for the responses to 
all come in. The summary below has the name of the distro, number of times 
suggested, highlights of the distro, and my thoughts.

Debian: 10
* security-focused, well-maintained
* try to avoid unnessary dependencies
* good package management

I tried it out version 2.2r5, using some custom reiserfs install disks. I 
actually hated the interface for dselect, I thought it was real clumsy and 
confusing. (I know you all will hate me for saying that ;) The jumping back 
and forth between dependency lists and main lists was painful.

Slackware: 4
* good base install
* BSD-style scripts (like Solaris)

I tried it, didn't think too much of it. Come out of the box ready for 
reiserfs.

Sorcerer: 1
* installs from source
* fast install

This is the one I actually ended up going with. I was able to get a base 
system, that was up-to-date. This distro got to the heart of what I wanted. 
I wanted to have some base system that was maintained by someone else, and 
then be able to customize for my environment on top of that (ie, don't want 
to hand compile essential items like gcc). The package management is pretty 
good, clean, and lightweight. What I really, REALLY like was that you can 
create your own scripts for software installation (which I thought would be 
great for self-documentation).

LinuxFromScratch: 3
* really small footprint

I've worked with LFS really hard for two months (I was at the point where I 
only had to type in 3 commands to get a complete system). But its a little 
too much customization. (I don't really want the option to have ls in 
/usr/local/bin).

Gentoo: 3
* long install (because its source-based)

I actually didn't try it out, but it looks like it has a lot of promise. I 
might try it out once I get another computer to test it out on. It has a 
ports-style system like BSD.

RockLinux: 1

I tried this when it was at version 1.4. The package management interface 
needs much improvement. It doesn't seem like its been worked on for awhile.

Solaris x86: 1

I have used this, and my biggest complaint is that the I/O is horribly slow. 
Other than that, it does feel an awful lot like Solaris ;). As a heads-up 
though, Sun is putting Solaris x86 on vacation so you can't download it, and 
*if* Solaris 9 x86 comes out, it will be much delayed from the SPARC 
version. One final note, Sun recently announced a Linux-based strategy.

Mandrake: 1

I didn't try it.

FreeBSD: 1

I tried it before, but the hardware support for my newer items was a no go. 
I'll probably get into it later, probably when I'm trying out the Gentoo 
stuff (see above).

In summary, I went with Sorcery. I'm doing this as a home project, so I can 
afford to be bleeding edge. After the initial install I trimmed a couple of 
packages out, added some in and rebuilt the whole system from the sources. 
It took < 3hrs on a Duron 750 w/ 320MB RAM.

If you don't want/need to be bleeding edge, Debian still uses the 2.2 kernel 
(it can be updated to use 2.4)and seems to have won the hearts of many out 
there.

Thien

>From: "Thien Vu" <thien_vu@hotmail.com>
>To: <linuxmanagers@linuxmanagers.org>
>Subject: Solaris-like distro?
>Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 17:53:37 -0800
>
>Hi all,
>
>I recently used Solaris and really liked the idea of a core system
>installation. This is the type of installation that gives the most
>basic/essential parts of the system (although there are drivers/other
>packages that can be removed). Along with the core system installation, Sun
>provides Recommended & Security updates weekly for free.
>
>My question is: Is there a similar Linux distro that has a similar 
>paradigm?
>This seems to work best because I don't want to install every component of 
>a
>basic Linux system from scratch and at the same time I would rather not 
>have
>the bloat associated with many distros (unneeded packages due to
>dependencies).
>
>I'm aware of the following system administration oriented distros: 
>Sorcerer,
>LinuxFromScratch, and Rock-Linux. I've also used Redhat.
>
>As usual, will summarize.
>
>Thien


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