[lug] mandriva 10.2 limited edition 2005

Zan Lynx zlynx at acm.org
Tue Aug 30 23:25:26 MDT 2005


On Tue, 2005-08-30 at 21:49 -0600, Hugh Brown wrote:
> I decided to give mandriva a whirl today.  I did the default install and a
> bit more (there wasn't an Install Everything checkbox, which was
> unfortunate).
> 
> I then tried to build a tomcat related thing and noticed that autoconf and
> automake weren't on the system.  I found a mirror that listed them in the
> SRPMS for 10.2 and downloaded the source rpms.  Then I noticed that
> rpmbuild was nowhere to be found.
> 
> Is limited edition really that limited?
> 
> The other interesting thing is that now when I go back to the mandriva
> website, I can't find the free download area.
> 
> So, can you only get a sane environment by paying them money or am I
> missing something (sane == useful for non-newbie)?

Somewhat unconnected rant follows.  Nothing against Hugh, he just
triggered me. :)

I've always considered Mandrake/Mandriva a desktop distro.  Why do
people take a desktop Linux and try to build server software on it?
That's trying to do two things (Development, Server) on a distro not
designed for that.  Sure, you can do it, after enough pain, but whyyyy?

I consider Gentoo the ultimate development distro.  Compile with -g in
CFLAGS and nostrip noclean in FEATURES, and you can debug as deep as you
like, with all the source code.

Debian or RedHat probably make the best servers, or derivative distros
close to those two.

I don't know where to rate SUSE since I never use it.

But a desktop distro doesn't *care* about building code or running
servers.  It should be all about the office tools, the video games, the
music, the bling and the blang.

"Desktop" is probably even better split into separate Office, Games and
Multimedia categories.  The Game and Multimedia specialists tend to
devolve into set-top boxes though.
-- 
Zan Lynx <zlynx at acm.org>
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