Which is the best distribution? [LWN.net]

April 7, 2004

This article was contributed by Ladislav Bodnar

An email from an editor of an online business publication asked a simple question: what is the best Linux distribution for deploying on personal, small business and enterprise desktops, and personal, small business and enterprise servers? Based on user experiences and feedback over the last couple of years, online discussions and general trends among the major Linux distributions, the following would be my recommendations.

Personal desktop OS. Xandros Desktop or LindowsOS for not-technical users, and Mandrakelinux or SUSE LINUX for the rest. Both Xandros and LindowsOS have succeeded in bringing the Linux desktop closer to the masses, with many user-friendly enhancements, excellent hardware autodetection and support for popular consumer hardware, such as digital cameras, scanners and wireless network cards. They are excellent for general computing tasks. Those users who need more power will be better off with either Mandrakelinux or SUSE LINUX. These two distributions are a lot more powerful and complete than either Xandros or LindowsOS, and both can be obtained for free from the Internet. Some would argue that Fedora Core should also be considered in this category. However, its lack of out-of-the-box multimedia support, as well as the obvious tendency of its developers to concentrate on enterprise-level features, such as scalability and SELinux, would make Fedora Core a better choice for the enterprise desktop than personal desktop.

Small business desktop OS. Fedora Core and SUSE LINUX are both excellent choices. For a small company with a limited IT budget, SUSE LINUX is probably the best choice - it can be downloaded for free and it is one of the most complete and well-designed distributions on the market. Fedora Core 1 has to be the second favorite, its only drawback being its current transition to Linux kernel 2.6 with SELinux functionality, which is far from smooth. Xandros Business Desktop is also an excellent product, but at US$495 for a 5-license pack, it is too expensive to compete effectively with the other two, especially while the company still lacks brand recognition and official support from major hardware vendors. Most recent releases by Mandrakesoft had a reputation for being somewhat buggy, which makes Mandrakelinux a less appealing candidate for a small business desktop, at least until the company improves its quality control mechanisms.

Enterprise-level desktop OS. A lot depends on the company's IT budget and the level of desired integration with the rest of its computing infrastructure. If money is no object, it would be wise to get in touch with both Red Hat and SUSE and obtain a quote for a complete solution. If money is tight, Fedora Core is a very good choice - free and well supported by the Fedora community. Having said that, it would be unfair to exclude other vendors - Mandrakesoft is recovering from a financial disaster, so it might be willing to offer an equivalent package for a fraction of the cost of Red Hat or SUSE solutions. Another option is Sun Java Desktop System (based on SUSE), but we don't hear much about this comparatively new product so it is harder to voice an informed opinion.

Personal server OS. Debian or Slackware are the hardest to beat. Besides being free, both of them have a reputation as the most solid, reliable and trustworthy Linux operating systems on the market. Their development models ensure superior quality control and both of them enjoy unparalleled community support from many web sites and user communities. Debian has always been the best distribution in terms of upgradeability to new releases, but the inclusion of the "swaret" tool in the latest Slackware means that Slackware can now also be upgraded with one command. Needless to say, both Debian and Slackware pride themselves in providing timely security updates.

Small business server OS. Same as above. Although Red Hat Linux and its newly launched Fedora Core are still the dominant Linux operating systems in most server rooms around the world, the company has alienated many users by unpopular policy changes, pushing them towards its more expensive enterprise products. On the other hand, Debian and Slackware have been around for a long time and major policy changes are unlikely. For a small business on a tight budget there really is no reason to spend money on a operating system running its servers, except perhaps in some special circumstances.

Enterprise-level server OS. If money is no object and the company requires solid hardware support or the services of Oracle and other third-party commercial applications, then it is probably best to get in touch with either Red Hat or SUSE. In fact, Red Hat and SUSE are the only two Linux distributions which are officially certified and supported by Oracle. Enterprises on a tighter budget could possibly consider deploying Debian on their servers. If support is needed, Red Hat and SUSE are in the best position to offer it, albeit at a price. Third-party commercial support is also available for Debian. Slackware is somewhat less appealing in this category, simply because it might be a lot harder to find support and personnel familiar with the distribution.

As always, these kinds of comparisons are bound to raise some controversy and many will no doubt disagree with the choices. Nevertheless, writing things down this way has resulted in an interesting conclusion: SUSE seems to be providing the widest range of products for a variety of scenarios. These vary from its biannual SUSE LINUX releases and specialized Linux Desktop and Office Desktop solutions, to the company's Standard, Enterprise and Openexchange server products. It also has the backing of Novell and its long marketing arm to take on Red Hat. Are the prices too steep? In that case, serious consideration could be given to deploying Debian, especially on servers.

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Which is the best distribution?

Posted Apr 8, 2004 7:10 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

Personal desktop OS. Xandros Desktop or LindowsOS for not-technical users, and Mandrakelinux or SUSE LINUX for the rest.

I don't see why a non-technical user could not deal with modern versions of MandrakeLinux (and probably SUSE, but I have no direct experience of it). Some time ago I installed MandrakeLinux 9.2 on a "2000-vintage" Celeron system and it was the first Linux installation I ever succeeded in getting working to my satisfaction without having to touch the command line or manually edit any configuration file. It was also well localized to my native language.

Unlike LindowsOS, MandrakeLinux takes security seriously and does not encourage the user to work only as root (logging in as root gets you warning boxes and a blood-red default desktop background if you persist). It compensates for this by having all the graphical administration tools ask for the root password when needed, which should be an easy enough solution for any users intelligent enough to use any kind of computer at all. The LindowsOS approach is a security disaster waiting to happen, which may end up smearing correctly done distributions.

Fedora and Debian

Posted Apr 9, 2004 15:18 UTC (Fri) by hazelsct (guest, #3659) [Link]

Package signatures are not practical in a distributed project like Debian: they would require that all users get the entire Debian maintainer keyring in order to verify packages. The system of checksums and signed Release files is equally secure, though as you say, not "easy" (yet).

Fedora and Debian

Posted Apr 9, 2004 21:48 UTC (Fri) by EricBackus (guest, #2816) [Link]

> Package signatures are not practical in a distributed
> project like Debian: they would require that all users
> get the entire Debian maintainer keyring in order to
> verify packages.

First of all, if Debian were so inclined, it could make it easy to get and verify the entire Debian maintainer keyring.

Second of all, the right solution would probably involve having a Debian Signer person (or group of people?) that signs packages, so end users need only verify against that one signature. The Debian Signer would of course have to be able to verify signatures from any Debian maintainer.

Third of all, even if making this work is difficult (which it shouldn't be), that's not a good enough excuse. Signed packages are *important*. Given that other distributions do this transparently and Debian doesn't, I really don't understand why anyone uses Debian at all.

Fedora and Debian

Posted Apr 15, 2004 17:24 UTC (Thu) by coolian (guest, #14818) [Link]

"Third of all, even if making this work is difficult (which it shouldn't be), that's not a good enough excuse. Signed packages are *important*. Given that other distributions do this transparently and Debian doesn't, I really don't understand why anyone uses Debian at all."

That is the most retarded conclusion I have ever heard. Maybe you should get a blood test done and see if you have a 23rd chromosome issue.

Which is the best distribution?

Posted Apr 8, 2004 15:55 UTC (Thu) by tsinclai (guest, #11399) [Link]

I used to run RH 8 + Win4Lin on my office PC. (There are two Windows-only apps I need for
work) and it was fine. RH 9 was just too flaky for my taste and then (as I've mentioned
elsewhere) RH decided that I no longer fit into their customer demographic.

I switched to Xandros 2.0 Deluxe since it included Crossover Office and I've been very pleased. It
sees all my hardware and I can integrate into our Windows-centric network very easily. It also
makes an impressive demo for my UNIX students when I can show them how they can run (some)
Windows apps on a Linux desktop. (Most of them would like to switch but some applications,
mainly games, are keeping them on Windows. I point them to Transgaming.com, of course.)

I have a small headless file server which is running RH 7.2 (I use fresrpms apt-get port to keep it
up to date) and in my classes I'll be switching to Knoppix from RH 8. We also have a Sun e450
running Solaris 8 which I'm planning to transition to Debian mainly because package
management in Solaris is so completely hosed.

Where does Gentoo fit in?

Posted Apr 9, 2004 13:07 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

Gentoo is generating a LOT of community activity, due to its extremely
active user community. I agree (in general) with the conclusions of the
article on the big traditional distributions, and I can't point out one
category where Gentoo should definitely be included, because I simply
don't KNOW enough about it as there seems to be almost a conspiracy of
silence about it (witness this article, with it's general claims to review
"the best" in several categories, not even /mentioning/ Gentoo, even in a
warning, or a disclaimer of to little data, similar to that for Sun's
"Java"-Desktop), but I'd LIKE to know how it stacks up.

At this point, and claiming as it does that the opinion of the community
was included, the failure to mention Gentoo in the context of Linux
distribs could be considered as grave an error as was the light treatment
of Linux in business IT textbooks, as covered in a recent LWN story. Just
as I'd consider such a textbook author to have not done their homework if
they failed to consider Linux a mentionable OS (while mentioning MSWormOS
as /several/ OSs), someone that fails to consider Gentoo a mentionalble
distrib, in a story about "the best" Linux distribs, given the noise about
it in the community (look at LWN comments) and the fact that Slack WAS
mentioned, with far LESS activity, cannot IMO be considered to have done
their homework either.

Note that I'm saying this NOT as a Gentoo user, as I'm using Mandrake, but
as a Linux user curious to know what the author thinks of Gentoo, given
all the noise it generates, and seriously interested enough in it
presently to have installing it and learning it in a dual boot environment
with my current Mandrake, as my current project.

Duncan

Where does Gentoo fit in?

Posted Apr 9, 2004 14:40 UTC (Fri) by ladislav (guest, #247) [Link]

The main reason for Gentoo being left out was that, originally, the article served as a response to a question from a general business publication. It just didn't seem fair to sell Gentoo to a person whose familiarity with Linux was, presumably, too limited.

Granted, this is LWN, so Gentoo could have been included. The question is, which category would it fit best? Daniel Robbins has yet to come out and say openly that Gentoo is ready for mission critical servers (in the past he was quoted on several occasions that other distribution would perhaps be more suitable for such tasks). Yes, there are many who do use Gentoo on servers, but most of those are advanced users who are capable of sorting out most problems that come their ways. Perhaps as a personal server? Maybe. But would I want to spend the best part of a day to get a Gentoo server up and running if I can have the same in minutes with Slackware or Debian?

That leaves us with a desktop, where we are talking not one day, but at least two days of compiling (OpenOffice took 36 hours to compile on this 1.4GHz P4 machine), before you get a fairly complete setup. Sure, you can install binaries first and recompile later in the background, but still... it is just an awful lot of work to get Gentoo up and running - great if you are a hobbyist with plenty of spare time on your hands, but maybe not that ideal in a business environment where you don't have the luxury to tie down the computers for two days. Even if you do, once you compile the stuff and get your desktop up and running the way you like it, you'll end up using the same applications as the business next door that chose Mandrake and had it all set up before tea time. To an average user, it matters little that the underlying Python power in Portage is so much more flexible and beautiful than urpmi when all he or she cares about is getting the work done with OpenOffice, Gnumeric, or whatever.

I used to be a big fan of source-based distributions and believed at one point that they would dominate the Linux distribution world in the future. I no longer hold that belief. While Gentoo is a fun distribution to tinker with and to learn the internals of a Linux system, it is not a panacea. Yes, it has addressed the package dependency problems often associated with binary distributions, but at the same time it introduced different kinds of problems - it's not rare to hear in forums that a small upgrade completely hosed somebody's Gentoo system.

Gentoo comes with a lot of power and that's why it has to be treated with caution. I would really only recommend it to OS enthusiasts and maybe to those who are interested in getting to know all there is about Linux.

Where does Gentoo fit in?

Posted Apr 9, 2004 17:52 UTC (Fri) by mmealman (guest, #9223) [Link]

I don't know that I'd recommend it to just "enthusiasts" and those interested in getting to know Linux, because as you've stated Gentoo is extremely powerful. I evaluated it for around a year and our company has switched from Debian to Gentoo on our servers because it offers a lot more for us.

The compile times really aren't much of a hit on a server environment, because the machines are powerful and you're not dealing with a lot of long compile times(like you would on a desktop). But on the corporate desktop(which we're looking into providing for our customers) we've hit on using either SUSE or Fedora Core for the reasons you've stated.

But on the server level if you have an expert staff it works very well.

disappointing article

Posted Apr 9, 2004 17:45 UTC (Fri) by maney (subscriber, #12630) [Link]

I was expecting a joke; I'm appalled that the author attempts to answer this question in earnest.

So I guess you chose the distribution(s) that you use by flipping darts over your shoulder? If not, if you gave any thought to the matter, then you might have followed a process much like that behind this article. While I sometimes think Ladislav's articles are close to being demonstrations of the generality of Aahz's law, this one looks like a pretty good attempt to dance across the minefield of the distro wars. Likely to generate discussion, certainly; the troll you imply it is, heck no.

disappointing article

Posted Apr 9, 2004 18:40 UTC (Fri) by pimlott (guest, #1535) [Link]

I should have elaborated: ... attempts to answer this question in earnest in a brief article devoid of any research or objective methodology. There was no useful information in that article. My expectations of LWN are higher than merely "likely to generate discussion". Perhaps there's a place for this article, but it's not LWN.

disappointing article

Posted Apr 13, 2004 14:19 UTC (Tue) by haraldt (guest, #961) [Link]

Perhaps not the LWN you like and expect, but personal opinion isn't necessarily truth..

Which is the best distribution?

Posted Apr 9, 2004 16:56 UTC (Fri) by X-Nc (guest, #1661) [Link]

> Although Red Hat Linux and its newly launched Fedora Core are still
> the dominant Linux operating systems in most server rooms around the
> world, the company has alienated many users by unpopular policy
> changes, pushing them towards its more expensive enterprise products.

A more accurate statement would be "the company has alienated a small number of users". So far the only people that I know of who feel "alienated" by the RH restructure are the ones who haven't taken the time to look at and understand what RH has done. All anyone needs to do is to objectively analyze what the change really is (as opposed to just listening to what others say it is) and they'd see it's nothing to be bothered about or to hold ill will towards RH over. This doesn't mean that switching to a different distro is unthinkable. There are many reasons and situations where moving from RH 7.x, 8.0 or 9 to SUSE or Debian or any other distro is the best thing to do. But that's purily a technical decision. RH has proven that they were correct in making the reallignment they did and because of that Linux (and Open Source in general) are benifiting.

-- If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.

The best distribution, without any doubt at all, is...

Posted Apr 15, 2004 6:32 UTC (Thu) by hedgeek (guest, #19097) [Link]

Exactly! Slackware is of course the most solid Linux distro, and FreeBSD
Unix the best OS available ;-) Although the article is a bit trite, he's
obviously had experience with Mandrake and other major distro's. Though in a general sense, nailed it quite well.

Now if you've run MicroPort Unix SysVR3 (AT&T) on a 286 2.5MB memory and gotten 'DosMerge' to work. Or gotten the original SCO to send you custom boot disks to see if you could get Xenix to run on an 80286 that natively ran CP/M, then you're an 'old phart'.

--If I could spell, I'd say 'olde fart'. :-)

Be well.

The best distribution, without any doubt at all, is...

Posted Apr 15, 2004 14:53 UTC (Thu) by X-Nc (guest, #1661) [Link]

> Exactly! Slackware is of course the most solid Linux distro,
> and FreeBSDUnix the best OS available ;-)

Heh, Slackware solid. Good one.

But seriouslly it is a little bit of a shame that the *BSDs tend to get overshadowed by Linux. They are quite technically excellent and have a few advantages over Linux (though they also have areas where they are lagging). My personal take on the whole thing is that for mission criticle servers FreeBSD & NetBSD should be concidered along with the better Linux distros. For desktop and workstations, no. And for Firewalls... OpenBSD. Period.

> Now if you've run...

Lord, a pissing contest on who's used the anchentest technology. I used to be able to read uninterpreted punch cards but that's a skill that doesn't have much use these days. Then there were the "computers" where you programmed then by changing the wires on the circuit board... That's probably where I get my dislike of HW from.

-- If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.