[ydl-gen] off-topic: ydl-like distribution for x86_64?

[Geert Janssens]

Hello Nathan,

* Fedora Core is as close as you can get to Yellow Dog.
* As Derick mentioned, you could choose Red Hat instead, which is a commercial 
distribution which uses Fedora as it's base.
* Then there is CentOS, which is using the sources of Red Hat Enterprise. It 
tries to be as close as possible to Red Hat.

All of these use yum, although they also have other packet tools available 
(apt-get, up2date,...)

* Suse gets good reviews. I tried their previous (64-bit) release, but 
unfortunatly I had a lot of problems with it. So I abandoned it then. I may 
come back to it, because I liked it. It doesn't use yum, but yast. This is an 
advanced configuration management system, which allows to manage your 
packages as well. The major disadvantage of yast is that it's dead slow. 
Hopefully this will improve in the future.

* I don't have any experience with Debian based distros such as Debian itself, 
or Ubuntu. Their packet management system is based on apt, with an aparently 
very decent (but ageing) tool apt-get. I believe yum was inspired by apt-get, 
so it should feel familiar.

* The last one I can comment on is Mandriva. I've been using it for some time 
now, and it works good. It aims more at desktop/workstation use that server 
use. It is rpm based such as Fedora and friends, but has developped it's own 
packet managment tool urpmi. After yum, it took me a while to get used to, 
but it's equally user-friendly and efficient.

A general remark:
I don't know if you tried installing the x86_64 version of Fedora r not. If 
so, you could first evaluate whether the 64-bit extensions really benifit 
whatever you want to do with your system. In most cases it does not. Try to 
search around the web to help you make the decision.
If you don't **really** benifit from the 64-bit extensions, you should install 
the 32-bit version of the distribution for now. x86_64 is still young, and 
the software for it is still much buggier (and less available) than the 
32-bit equivalents. It may well be that you won't have the same problems with 
the 32-bit edition.


Hope this information is useful.


Geert

On Friday 08 September 2006 04:40, Derick Centeno wrote:
> Hi Nathan:
> In the old days, before Fedora, I would have pointed to Red Hat.
> However, a lot of people who participate on this list like Ubuntu (or
> something like that) but that distribution is essentially based on
> Debian.  If I were not dedicated to the PowerPC architecture; I probably
> would choose Debian.
>
> The real issue is do you need or prefer a commercial or non-commercial
> Linux.  If you are going to look as Suse, you may just as well choose
> Red Hat instead, as Red Hat is closer to YDL than Suse is, in my opinion.
>
> Good Luck....
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Nathan Moore wrote:
> > This is an off-topic newbie sort of question:
> >
> > I've worked with YDL on a set of PowerMacs all summer and now feel
> > confident enough to spend money on new hardware.  The price per node
> > ratio of "from-parts" AMD x86_64  boxes was hard to beat, and now I'm
> > looking for a linux distribution that feels like yellowdog from the
> > shell.
> >
> > Any recommendations?  I tried Fedora Core 5 today, but once
> > installed, the program doesn't get past the boot stage (an additional
> > bug:  the machine won't make it tot he log-in screen if the ps2 mouse
> > is unconnected)
> >
> > I get the impression that Suse is one of the more well-developed
> > x86_64 distributions, but I can't imagine life without yum...
> >
> > sorry to stray so far from the proper topic.
> >
> >
> >
> > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> > Nathan Moore
> > Physics
> > Winona State University
> > AIM:nmoorewsu
> >
> >
> >
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