[UFO Chicago] Re: Brian's Conversion from FreeBSD to DebianandQuestions on X

[Christopher D. Heer]

From: Jesse Becker

> --- "Christopher D. Heer" <cheer at dls.net> wrote:
> > So I'm looking to migrate my in-home server to Linux as a
> 
> Welcome to the world of the sane. :-)

Haven't quite arrived, as of yet.  But I'm en route.  :)

> The "yes it will matter answer":  The downside to this
> stability is that the versions of software shipped tend to
> lag behind (sometimes *far* behind) the "current" version.
> For example, I run a number of Red Hat boxes at work.  The
> current version of Apache that ships with RHEL4 is 2.0.52.
> If you check apache.org, you will see that there not only
> is there a 2.0.58 release out, but also a 2.2.2 release as
> well.

Good to know.  In fact, version management is one of the things that makes
my limbs twitch a bit.  I was trying to do some MIPS cross-compiling using
cygwin and I was forever fussing with this -- e.g. "What version gcc do I
need?  Glibc?  What about..."  (Well, you get the idea.)

> No, it does not.  Personally, I prefer "smaller" window
> managers, and Fluxbox (similar to blackbox and openbox).  I
> find that KDE and Gnome are large, bloated, slow, and offer
> few benefits over running a smaller, faster window manager.
> It is very important to note that you can run KDE/Gnome
> programs with "running KDE" or "running Gnome" (I use k3b
> on a regular basis, for example).

Again, good to know.  I don't expect to spend much time anywhere but at a
shell prompt, but I expect there will be some windowed apps that I need to
(or want to) run.  I'm definitely leaning toward small and fast unless
something pops up that absolutely insists on one of the bigger ones.

> Ask away.  Also, the #unixhelp channel on efnet is pretty
> good if you ask reasonable questions.  I'm one of the few
> Ops that isn't squarely in the BSD camp though.  (I've
> found the various #linuxhelp channels to be a waste of
> time).

Thanks for that -- you may see me before long!  :)

--chris