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**Soybomb** · January 22, 2003, 23:34

I hate rpms, resolving dependencies was too big of a pain I though. Apt on it made it more livable though I will admit. Good package management is something I like alot. I'll stick with freebsd.

**murakami** · January 23, 2003, 01:13

I've probably have used or administered most of the Unix variants (Solaris, Irix, Clix, HPUX), Windows crap, and a good chunk of the linux ones, including ones before 1.0. THEY ALL SUCK.

All I want is a fast, stable, reasonably easy to configure and maintain OS, that supports the software I use with a minimum of fuss. I have better things to do than constant system administration. I use RH because it more or less fulfills my needs without all the annoyances/instability of windows. Yes, I've tried slackware/Debian/Mandrake/Suse/FreeBSD/etc and from my point of view it doesn't matter much to me, since I'm mostly doing Java these days.

**psyiode** · January 23, 2003, 02:03

Originally posted by murakami
I've probably have used or administered most of the Unix variants (Solaris, Irix, Clix, HPUX), Windows crap, and a good chunk of the linux ones, including ones before 1.0. THEY ALL SUCK.

Check out Every OS Sucks by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie
-Psyiode

**Chris** · January 23, 2003, 04:06

Originally posted by simple3
I use Gentoo. It is pretty nice, but all the coolness of USE variables has its problems. I mostly stick to FreeBSD.

on Red Hat: RedHat is especially susceptible to haxxoring because of its widespread useage (like Windows) regardless of wheter or not it is a better or more secure product. It is in the spotlight and that makes it easier to see its imperfections. I don't think criteria should be the sole criteria for establishing it's suckiness. Maybe there is a reason that it is in such widespread usage.

--simple3

I agree that Market share has a big bearing on the number of vulnerabilities associated with Red Hat. That said, I think that Red Hat has gone the way of Windows. The RH dev team has sacrificed stability and security for user friendliness. I personally am not willing to sacrifice security and stability for user friendliness so I use Slack as far as linux goes.

As for Gentoo, I haven't used it so can't speak to it other than to say that a lot of GLSA security advisories have come across bugtraq in the last few months. If you look at this listing: http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/gentoo.html there are roughly the same number of advisories for Gentoo as there are for Slackware (http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/slackware.html) But that is two months worth of advisories for Gentoo and 3 years worth for Slack, and trust me...Gentoo can't blame it on market share.

**Chris** · January 23, 2003, 04:10

Since Market share was mentioned I think this is interesting:

http://counter.li.org/reports/machines.html

If you scroll down to the Distribution table, you see that as expected, Red Hat is the behemoth. What I find more interesting is that some of what I consider to be the more secure distros (and BTW someone said that you can lock any of them down and they are 100% correct) have a pretty decent market share (i.e. Slackware and SuSE).

**highwizard** · January 23, 2003, 05:05

I dislike RH as well. If someone wants to start out with a Distro and is coming from Windows then I tell them to Look in Mandrake (Yes, I know mandrake isn't super secure. However it's a good way to begin the process). As far as for myself, I prefer Slackware.

Since this is the questions area, I will ask one:

Have any of you had experience with OpenWall?

www.openwall.com

**converge** · January 23, 2003, 07:38

Redhat was .. okay... back between 4.3 and 6.0, imo.

They mangle the init structure and configs..

They are the head of the "we can take over the Windows market" movement.. which has put focus on making less of a solid OS and more of a graphical user friendly one. The problem is... Lindows popped out of no where and out-did this. They have spent how many years now since the big "movement", and have gotten as far as...

It makes people way too reliant on graphical configs.. it is so gui based, that people who install it don't know that its possible to not boot straight into X.. or if they see the option, don't understand why you'd even think about it.

It is bloated and bulky. How many install discs are they up to now? Redhat is highly KDE. Now... I like a little gui indulgance every once in a while, so I'll load up gnome, but KDE 3 just takes resource usage to a whole other level.

Not to mention the work of trying to secure it from its default install. Granted, no distro save BSD (or tries) is an angel in this, but... I think the whole argument that "more vulnerabilities because it is more popular like windows" is fubar. That is a good explanation for why so many lame outlook "virus/worms" are spread on a yearly basis.. but not an excuse for the security/lack of an OS.

**Chris** · January 23, 2003, 07:52

Originally posted by c0nv3r9

Not to mention the work of trying to secure it from its default install. Granted, no distro save BSD (or tries) is an angel in this, but... I think the whole argument that "more vulnerabilities because it is more popular like windows" is fubar. That is a good explanation for why so many lame outlook "virus/worms" are spread on a yearly basis.. but not an excuse for the security/lack of an OS.

Actually...I have found that Slack has a pretty spiffy posture out of the box with the exception of running services that you need to shut off and a few other minor mods. About a year and a half ago I did this up for a friend that was running a web/mail server on his box as well as SSH: http://www.securitytribe.com/slakhard.txt

All told it takes about 15 minutes to go from full blown default install to (in this case 4 but in most cases) 1 listening port (ssh) assuming you aren't using the GUI.

As for market share...I DO think there is a correlation. Not as an excuse, but becuase the more people that are using something, the more will come across problems. You could have the buggiest piece of software in the world, but if no one uses it the bugs won't be discovered. I have the other $0.98 if you need them as well ;)

**converge** · January 23, 2003, 08:03

Originally posted by Chris
All told it takes about 15 minutes to go from full blown default install to (in this case 4 but in most cases) 1 listening port (ssh) assuming you aren't using the GUI.

That's one reason why I run slack :) It takes me longer to get an NVIDIA driver, install it, and config X than it does to drop my box to SSH and update sshd.

**ashman** · January 23, 2003, 19:08

Heh, I don't recall starting this thread :) Thanks to everyone who backed up my personal biased comment with no ground in fact. I'll attempt to stop that in the future.

Having said that... there's a few reasons I don't like redhat. I don't care for RPM's. They're difficult to resolve dependency issues.

There's a bunch of services running after install that I don't need, but the OS seems to think it needs for one thing or another. For instance, GNOME depends on portmap if you install from RPMs, at least in 8.0.

By default /sbin and /usr/sbin are not in the PATH of either su'ed users or root. While this is easy to fix, it's a hassle and just makes me think that redhat is moving all command functions to the GUI.

Finally, after installing it on a laptop and curing some security problems with the default install, it started freezing up. I guess I turned something off that it thought it needed, but I didn't feel like resolving the issue so I just installed Slack.

**skroo** · January 23, 2003, 22:33

I personally hate it. But...

OK, before we get into the 'my distro has a bigger wang than your distro' argument: I'm a Slackware user. I also have to work with RedHat professionally. And I run several other platforms as well, so let's keep off that track and on the one at hand, OK?

Right. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

RPM is a piss-poor method of updating and maintaining a Linux system. While I apppreciate what it attempts to do, it does so poorly. Example: try to replace the OpenSSL libs on a semi-sensible RH install. Watch as around 200 dependencies fail because RPM isn't smart enough to know that just because a particular binary requires a particular library to function, it doesn't necessarily *care* what the version of that library is. Bitch #2 with RPM: it can be broken if you build from source, or use non-RH-supplied RPMs. And, finally, it does not teach you to build your own software, or the issues involved with doing that - and this is really how *nix is designed to operate.

Next gripe with RPM: it fosters the false belief that only packages provided by RedHat are worth using. It also enforces an artificial upgrade cycle - 'whoops, we can't get an updated RPM from RedHat for that remote root exploit, better upgrade to 8.0' - when a rebuild from source and maybe an ldconfig would've fixed the problem. And while you and I might know better, try explaining to your client that yeah, we can update from source, but there's a good chance this'll fuck up RPM for your next RPM-based update. You're hosed.

Next up: the RH interpretation of the SysV init process seems to rely on ten bazillion symlinks that neither my Solaris nor AIX machines have - and a bizarre insistence on calling scripts that source other scripts that refer to another script that's maybe gonna call some other script... You get the idea.

The concept of forcing a GUI onto you. I hate XWindows. It was really, Really, REALLY good for 1986, but has turned into a clusterfucked behemoth since then. That and the use of KDE: the Win9x GUI sucked under Windows, so why are we forcing it on Linux users? Oh, yeah, because we don't want them to have to know that they're using Linux, or, indeed, take them outside of the oh-so-safe graphical environment. Yes, I know it can be avoided, but how many RH users really do? We have enough poorly-installed boxes in our colo that show that most people think that they have to do everything via a GUI.

Which leads me on to: why is RedHat so goddamned insistent on trying to make people think Linux is just Windows in a slightly different wrapper? It's not. No matter how much it may look, feel, or act like Windows, it ain't. And for most people, Linux makes a lousy desktop OS. If they can't cope with basic GUI navigation and concepts in 2000, how can they be expected to deal with it under an OS that doesn't present a nice, friendly face onto things? It's bad enough trying to walk your average user through a Windows printer driver install over the phone; even using CUPS it's damn near impossible.

Another item that bothers me is their 'custom' kernel builds. Under RH7.3, ipchains ships as enabled by default under their 2.4.18-3 (the -3 being their revision, with their own source patches applied) kernel. OK, running ipchains under a 2.4.x kernel is (IMHO) retarded, since iptables provides clearer syntax and better control over what you can and can not filter. That aside, I spent six weeks (on and off) trying to figure out why iptables under the RH kernel would deny all traffic from one particular network. Answer: fragmented packets were causing it to go batshit, despite a null ruleset being applied. This is bad.

Much of what I've outlined above also goes some way towards explaining RH's (lack of) security. Now, let's look at some of the good things they've done.

Well, they've come up with some useful drivers, notably for RAID controllers - but much of that work has been done in conjunction with IBM, only works under RH-specific kernel builds, and is hard to come by unless you want to shell out several hundred (or, indeed, thousand) dollars for their 'advanced' releases.

Brought Linux to a wider audience. Which I approve of, but they're forcing their method of doing things on people. Most folks don't understand the difference between the terms 'Linux' and 'distribution', and RH does sorta prey on this.

Shown that Linux can be used as a desktop OS, sorta. I don't want to spend 4 hours writing an assessment in OpenOffice just to have to load it up in Word and correct the fifteen million fiddly little things that didn't convert to MS' format (the one my audience is going to use to read it anyway) over the space of the next hour. And have you ever tried to walk a user through configuring Samba?

So yeah, they have some things going for them... But it's really Linux with training wheels. In a lot of ways, it's really a pity that BeOS never got the foothold it deserved, because it had a Linux-like CLI merged onto an ultraslick GUI and filesystem: all of the control with more than enough of the convenience. It could've been what Linux should be now.

And to answer your original question re: NTFS support via RPM: AFAIK, NTFS support needs to be built into the kernel, and, according to the makefile you get when using the kernel.org sources, it's read-only (I'm ignoring experimental works for now). If there's an RPM that supplies read/write or other functionality, use it at your own risk: it ain't officially Linux.

**apprentice** · January 24, 2003, 08:12

Skroo,
Thanks very much for the detailed explenation! I appreciate the thought that went in to it and the time to type it.
I'll have to order Slack.

Now another question from the newbie. At the Slack store there is the distribution and the Slack Essentials book. Do you guys recommend that book? Do you recommend the other books that are available?

Thanks for your time and patience.

**Chris** · January 24, 2003, 08:33

Originally posted by apprentice
Skroo,
Thanks very much for the detailed explenation! I appreciate the thought that went in to it and the time to type it.
I'll have to order Slack.

Now another question from the newbie. At the Slack store there is the distribution and the Slack Essentials book. Do you guys recommend that book? Do you recommend the other books that are available?

Thanks for your time and patience.

The book is worthwhile for a newbie. It is not a detailed tech explanation of the OS, but has installation tips, package listings etc. I think it may be online though in pdf or html format.

**GodMinusOne** · January 24, 2003, 09:16

has anyone on here used BigSlack?

**murakami** · January 24, 2003, 09:37

Skroo,

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

OK, I'll join the RH sucks bandwagon. It seems like NS7 and Mozilla cause it to slow down and page like a mofo. Sucks when all your display is on a browser. I'll try moving to slackware when I finish my current project.

Has anyone tried Crossover Office on slackware?

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REDHAT SUCKS!... WHY DOES IT SUCK?

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