Help with open source OS?
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at
10:00
I have been looking at different Linux/open source distributions and i have narrowed down my options to either Debian or Open Solaris. Can you give me a comparison of the 2 and what would your choice be for programming/editing/playing around with the OS.
Tagged with: Linux • linux open source • solaris • source distributions
Filed under: Open Source
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Download and burn the Debian Net Installer, Its easier to use and loads the complete Debian Operating System to your Hard Drive. Open Solaris is Unix and Uses Linux files to make it a graphical user interface. It is a difficult operating system to work with and Updates tend to kill it off.
Programming? No question, Debian. GCC is part of the standard install there, even when you install it from LiveCD (NOTE: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED). Also worth commenting on, Knoppix and Damn Small Linux are live CDs which install as Debian. In Knoppix’s case a vanilla debian in fact. And Ubuntu is so close to Debian that several Debian developers use it. Installing from the CD set is a bear. A guy who knows a lot more about computers than I do said it took him about two weeks. I’m writing this on a Debian KDE desktop installed from a Live CD (from Debian, not Knoppix). Its hardware demands are modest: I have etch on a laptop from 1998. And there are dpkg and apt which are package management systems which can teach you a lot.
My experience with Open Solaris is more limited. It demands a lot of hardware power. An acquaintance said "It’s large, slow and doesn’t come with a compiler" (You have to install GCC Separately) "Why should I want to run Vista?" It’s still incredibly stable but it is a less forgiving kernel than Linux, so think of it as a stable and intimidating Fedora Core. The only guy I think of when I think Solaris fanbois is Joerg Schilling who maintains CDRTools. He’s written a LOT about why Solaris is better than Linux and Debian forked CDRTools into wodim because he released it under a Sun license before Sun embraced Open Source.
Editing: tossup. Whatever editor is available for Debian is available for Open Solaris. Can’t be better if you’re the same.
Playing around. The Linux kernel is the most forgiving for newbies. Any Unix kernel, Solaris, BSD’s, Mach, will give you a few nasty little shocks. Andy Tannenbaum told Linus Torvalds if he was grading the kernel the grade would be low. If you are easily intimidated I would say either Debian or slackware. Otherwise it is your choice.
If your computer can run XP it can run Open Solaris with relatively few problems, I think. If it’s lower end, think Debian. If you want to start coding and so forth out of the box — think Debian. But sometimes it is worthwhile to go through things like installing compilers instead of letting the installation do it for you because it really makes you think about what you are doing. I like old computers so I would go with Debian or Slackware. I will back off from making a final recommendation though.
I’ve not had that much experience with Solaris however I can thoroughly recommend Debian as it can be pulled around all over the place and still work. Also it is unlikely that you will get anything more stable than Debian.
http://wiki.debian.org/ProgrammingLanguage
http://www.debian.org/
LUg.