[TriLUG] different versions of 7.2 for sale]

John Beimler john at radiomind.com
Wed Oct 31 00:21:35 EST 2001


begin  quotation from Brent Fox <bfox at linuxheadquarters.com> [on 011030 22:09]::

> I don't know why you feel it is your duty to talk them into Mandrake.  
> There's so much more to a distro than the installer, which is essentially a 
> throw-away piece of software.  You install the box, and you don't see the 
> installer again until you upgrade.  

ok, I have to jump in now..

The installer is incredibly important, otherwise everyone would (IMHO) be 
using Debian.  (Slow stable update issues aside) They have the largest base 
building and testing the packages, and the suite of package tools rivals the 
BSD ports collection.  The BSDs are another group of OS's whose main stream
use is slowed by the installer.

I would wager that the install is a very important piece of software, I have
yet to work anywhere where a default load of any OS is actually used to 
run any computers in house.  So someone is either going to have to run the 
installer for each new/replacement server, or have some sort of disk image
to install.  I've seen the imaging in use for PCs, but I have yet to meet
a sysadmin that doesn't reload the OS to meet the needs for that server and
its particular situation. I have become intimately familiar with a number
of OS's install apps.  I would like to avoid them, but even in large companies
there is no way to avoid them.

regards

john



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