[Rule-list] Red Hat No Longer Supports 486

[Liam Proven]

> In my opinion, these two items provide the only reason for doing
> anything to Slackware. Slackware is already a mature, full featured,
> modern distribution that can be used for essentially any purpose Linux
> can be used for. In addition, Slackware already installs on the
> hardware that Red Hat won't work with -- which was, I presume, the
> original purpose of the RULE project.

Quite. Why I suggested it, in fact.

> that needs to keep pace with Red
> Hat, the industry leader, 

<Chuckle> You reckon?

I'd say RH hasn't been a leader for years.

It sponsored the creation of GNOME and wasted the time and effort of a 
legion of talented coders, splitting the Linux GUI world into two warring 
factions, all because of differences over the license of Qt (now 
ancient history) and C versus C++. An epic tragedy of the open source 
world.

Its distribution has gradually slid further and further behind the times.

It is not the biggest or smallest, easiest or hardest, fastest, slowest, 
most friendly, least friendly, most useful, least useful; it does not 
excel in any area.

SuSE is easier and more comprehensive and supports everything around. It's 
also the basis for UnitedLinux, which is subsuming Caldera (the cleanest, 
simplest, most professional/business oriented distro), as well as Latin 
American leader Connectiva (which developed APR-RPM) and Japanese and 
Asian leader TurboLinux.

Mandrake is the most user-friendly general-purpose distro. It's derived 
from Red Hat.

The most accessible, Windows-like desktop distro is a close call between 
Lindows and Xandros (the former is a version of the latter) and Redmond 
(which is based on Caldera). None are really finished mature products yet, 
and I'll bet that they will end up merging or eliminating one another.

It's also worth noting that SuSE, Caldera, Mandrake, Lindows/Xandros and 
Redmond are all KDE-based. Another sign of Red Hat's GNOME-central 
redundancy and irrelevancy.

> You cannot install binaries intended for Red Hat without supporting
> RPM (which Slackware does, but only to a limited degree). 

So?

> You can't
> manage RPMs -- in a Red Hat like manner -- without performing
> dependancy checking -- and Slackware needs help in that area. 

> a lot of binaries intended for Red Hat won't run without adding some
> SysV scripts to Slackware's "BSD style" initialization scheme. This
> can be done manually, but it is difficult for inexperienced users.

SysV is arcane, complex and difficult. It's the standard, but I don't see 
that as sufficient reason to try to move to it.

> It is a distribution that has no existing package management system to
> get in the way when making modifications to mimic Red Hat's
> functionality. In this situation, a strength.

<LOL>

That's ridiculous.

If you want Red Hat, use Red Hat.

But RH is not anything special.

> Apt, which is really a front end to dpkg, is a full featured package
> management system that does many of the same things that RPM does, and
> there are many people who believe it is better than RPM. Be that as it
> may be, the fact is, that APT and RPM check for different dependancies
> and will remove and install packages without regard to the
> requirements of the other system...unless you want to fill the hard
> drive with duplicate packages.

So use one or the other.

APT-RPM is probably the best compromise.

> Apt is at the heart of Debian[...]

Good summary.

But that's not an argument against it. 

> There is no static target to
> develop Red Hat compatibility if Debian is used

So?

Red Hat compatibility is a Red Herring.

If you want RH, use RH. 

Don't even try to think of making anything else "into RH" or 
"RH-compatible" or "RH-compliant".

A distro is a distro. RH is nothing special.

If the object is to produce a cutdown RH, fine. It's not a bad idea: RH is 
widely used and supported, as an American product it's a favourite in 
America and consequently popular in Western English-speaking countries.

On the other hand, in non-English speaking countries - in other words, the 
vast majority of the rest of the world - RH is not hugely popular. SuSE is 
big in Germany, Red Flag in China, TurboLinux on the pacific rim, Mandrake 
in Francophone countries and so on.

RH is moving very deliberately away from marginal territories of the PC 
world. It's abandoning low-end kit, it's abandoning RISC and non-PC 
hardware, it's abandoning its own legacy tools in a last-ditch attempt to 
regain primacy in the Linux business.

This means it's less and less suited to the target platform of RULE.

So, there are 2 ways to go:

[1] Compile a whole new distro from RH's sources and try to track RH's 
changes. Come up with a special low-end installer and a special low-end 
base set of packages and track the rest of the main-line RH distro. RH8 is 
no longer suitable for direct installation on pre-Pentium hardware, and 
soon it will very likely be unsuitable for pre-P6/K6 level kit. Many 
products already are, and P6-optimised code is not optimal for the P5. 
Like many modern OSs, RH8 barely runs on a 64MB P200MMX today.

[2] Decide that perhaps RH is not a suitable basis for a distro for 
low-end kit and start over with something else. As such, there are only 2 
mainstream distros left which are suitable: Slackware and Debian. Everyone 
else is pursuing different agendas and targeting modern kit.

Slackware is simple and easy, but not hugely compatible with most other 
Linuxes by virtue of its UNIX-like INIT. It also is based on tarballs 
packages, which limits its abilities to be updated in the manner of a 
.DEB- or .RPM-based distro.

Debian is complex and arcane, but has the best packaging system in the 
business. It's a pig to install but once installed very sweet to run, by 
all accounts.

On that basis, I'd say RULE was at a fork in the road. There are two ways 
to go:

-	follow Red Hat, but give up the dream of installing standard 
binary x86 packages, as they're not suitable any more;

or

-	Take the installers, perhaps, and start over with a different 
distribution.

Not an easy choice.




> Yes, WP is good. It IS larger and slower than AbiWord, and takes up
> many more megabytes of diskspace and RAM, at least it does on the

Fair point.

> XML is primarily important only when document exchange is an issue. 

XML is vapourware. Document exchange means MS Word and RTF in the 
computing world I inhabit.

> WP 8.0 has some license issues that may
> get in the way if you try to distribute it. AbiWord doesn't. 

Excellent point.


> Law
> office[s] throughout the English speaking world (maybe elsewhere -- I
> don't know) rely on Word Perfect...and the conclusion? Nobody will be
> 100% satisfied with any choice made.  

:) Very true. OK, I guess I'm persuaded on that one.

> Some things have to be given up if you want to install Linux on
> machines with ISA motherboards, limited RAM, pre-Pentium processors,
> and small hard drives. The only thing about using xf86config that is
> difficult, is a lack of clear, concise instruction for inexperienced
> users. 

Well, it's failed for me on quite a number of machines, and I'm the sort 
of person who jots down the video chipset and amount of VRAM before I 
begin. It fails, and fails often. I think that's a problem.


> "Friendly and pretty" is for people who can afford a brand new
> Pentium 4 machine. 

Not so. SuSE's SAX2 will run on a 486 - it's slow but it works. Starts the 
machine in VGA mode and runs slowly through everything. Written in TCL/TK.




-- 
Liam Proven • http://members.aol.com/liamproven

“If you came across Bill Gates struggling in a raging river and
you had a choice between rescuing him or getting a Pulitzer
Prize-winning photograph, what shutter speed would you use?”


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