Good evening, James...
Post by James VahnI'm thinking that Yellow Dog is for the Mac. No?
That's what I was told, but I haven't decided whether to run some Mac
hardware I've got laying around here, yet. However, I'm hearing a *lot* of
glowing comments about their Linux-based GUI lately, and at least I owe it
to myself to take a look once in awhile to see what progress they're making.
Some of their Mac-based servers are really robust, once you get past the GUI
crap. ;-)
Post by James Vahn[FreeBSD]
Post by Dave Lairdtime. That, plus it breaks practically every bit of work I've put into
Kharma in the last five years, <sigh> including the newly-installed kernel.
Well, yes, you'd be running a FreeBSD kernel. I haven't looked at
FreeBSD since their 4.1 version, most of it seemed to center around
a Linux emulator of some sort. (why would I want to do that?)
Yes, my point exactly. All the color, dazzling GUI-stuph, power and speed of
unix while emulating Linux. Duh.
Post by James VahnBtw, there's a Debian project called "GNU/FreeBSD" making slow progress.
I think the goal is to have a "Linux" system (in the general sense of
the term) running a FreeBSD kernel.
Hmmm. Now *that* might get me even more interested. The FreeBSD kernel can't
be any worse than the present RedHat kernel. Why, I can even remember when a
standard Linux kernel would fit on a floppy disk... <sigh>
Post by James VahnPost by Dave LairdDebian does a *lot* of things I've come to expect of RedHat,
including its firewall,
The basic system uses inetd. You know: "all: all" in /etc/hosts.deny
There are several firewalls based on ipchains/tables to choose from.
Two for KDE look interesting: guarddog and guidedog, the former being
the actual firewall setup and the latter some sort of NAT/IPfwd gizmo.
I'm fairly certain that you can dump your Red Hat ipchains/tables rules
to an appropriate filename in /etc and thus recycle your existing
rules..
That's what I was gathering in browsing their website(s) earlier this
evening, and given the 330+ filters I've written for IPTables, I don't know
if I want to retype everything from scratch just yet. Having that and most
of the same applications would make this a viable transition in my opinion.
Post by James VahnPost by Dave Lairdbut it also uses a different set of development libraries and the
tree is different, too.
In what way? I have to claim complete ignorance here and it seems to be a
important point.
Take the battle between KDE and Gnome, for example. RedHat stashes the
libraries for both development trees in a certain place and order. The last
time I tried installing Debian atop a RedHat tree, both ended up in
different places beneath /lib, and there was a general state of confusion.
I've had KDE running sweetly now for over a year, first under Mandrake and
now RedHat, and all the macros and scripts I run on the workstation are
cross-compatible with the server for doing stupid maintenance thingees.
As far as the workstation goes, I use a series of gnu libraries that were
customized heavily during the compile (I installed KDE from source the last
time) to compensate for my television video card, the scanner and all the
other odd hardware I've managed to "tweak" into functionality. I'm scared
half to death of trying the same thing in Debian, however, that, too, may
come to pass shortly.
I am seriously considering building a workstation out of Debian atop the
RedHat system I currently use. I don't *like* RedHat anymore. I don't like
their politics, and I certainly don't appreciate the way they just dumped
their open source commitment in favor of a for-fee platform. Hell, I've been
with open source software now for nearly a decade, never been compromised,
hacked or even messed up my mailer too badly, although I *did* manage to end
up in a list of open-mail relays for a mercifully short time.
Post by James VahnPost by Dave LairdPlus it uses its own up2date program.
Since 1993. I think you'll get over that one pretty quick. A session
~# aptitude install kde
<churn churn>
Will use 280 megs of disk storage, proceed? Y/n
"Gawd. Looks like a flippin cartoon. I'm deleting it."
~# aptitude remove --purge kde
<churn churn>
Will FREE 280 megs, proceed? Y/n
"Good riddance. Hey! Debian 3.1-beta is here. Let's check it out."
~# aptitude dist-upgrade -t testing
<churn churn>
"Bah, too many bugs. I'm goin back."
~# aptitude dist-upgrade -t stable
<churn churn>
<laughing> That simple, huh? I think I'm going to build the BSD box into a
Debian box and take a gander at this myself. It's the only *disposable* box
in my entire network, just for that reason alone.
Dave
--
Dave Laird (***@kharma.net)
The Used Kharma Lot / The Phoenix Project
Web Page: http://www.kharma.net updated 11/17/2003
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An automatic & random thought For the Minute:
Alea iacta est.
[The die is cast]
-- Gaius Julius Caesar