[nycbug-talk] OT: Favorite Linux Distro (based on FreeBSD experience?)

[Scott Robbins]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 04:41:35PM -0400, Matt Juszczak wrote:
> Hi Scott,
>
> Thanks for the reply/comments.

Yeah, I brilliantly used the wrong address in replying--I blame it on
George or whoever set the mailing list defaults, as otherwise, I'd have
to accept responsibility.  :)


>
> I'm very much trying to decide at this point between Arch and CentOS.  
> Gentoo seems exciting because of the ports, but other than that, it 
> sounds like it's not what I'm looking for.  Ubuntu+Fedora are too hand 
> holding for me.
>
> Which would you choose between Arch and CentOS?


Wow.  For a BSD-er without that much experience of Linux, Arch.  CentOS
will frustrate you too much with lack of docs--though the unofficial
CentOS folks do a great job, better than RH.  

Arch will be far more familiar to you, IMHO.  CentOS is good in many
ways, mostly what we use at work, but as was said, some of the packages
are quite old.  This can be troublesome. 

Arch has an excellent wiki, and their forums are far more active than
the CentOS ones. 

This being said, at work we use CentOS and Fedora, though a developer an
d I just put Ubuntu on a VM, and will probably put Arch on another--AND,
and new boss told me set up a BSD box, which of course, was excellent
news. 

For stability as the main criterion (and possibly vendor support),
CentOS has to get the vote--as it's binary compatible with RH, most
vendors that support RH--and most of them do--will also support
CentOS--Zimbra being one of the exceptions. 

Arch for a more flexible system with up-to-date, possibly not as well
tested, packages, better docs, speed (COMPLETELY SUBJECTIVE), and
actually, I've been so busy that I actually haven't run Arch, save on a
netbook, for a year. 


-- 
Scott Robbins
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