Various
popular Linux Distributions in Computing Industry.
Here are the
following various Linux distributions in Computing industry:
1. Fedora:
Fedora is a popular open source Linux-based operating system.
Fedora
is designed as a secure, general purpose operating system. The operating system
is developed on a six-month release cycle, under the auspices of the Fedora
Project. Fedora is sponsored by Red Hat.
Fedora Releases
There are two Fedora releases a year. Fedora releases
do use a codeword for the release during development, but this
is invariably dropped following release, in favor of an integer release number.
Here are the codeword and versions for the last few releases:
Codename
|
Release
|
Release Date
|
End of Support
|
Lovelock
|
15
|
May 2011
|
20th June 2012
|
Verne
|
16
|
November 2011
|
2nd February 2013
|
Beefy Miracle
|
17
|
May 2012
|
30th July 2013
|
Spherical Cow
|
18
|
January 2013
|
14th January 2014
|
Shroedinger's Cat
|
19
|
May 2013
|
N/A
|
Heisenbug
|
20
|
December 2013
|
N/A
|
The user will not
notice much difference in the desktops between using Fedora 15and Fedora
20. This is probably a good thing, as most users prefer continuity to
radical overhauls.
The current Fedora
20 desktop is subtly different from that of Fedora 18 -
collapsing the options on the User menu into just three. In
general, Fedora 20 does not seems to be locked down quite so
heavily by SE Linux by default.
Note: following the release of Fedora
20, Fedora abandoned the convention of assigning codewords
to releases.
Different Versions of Fedora
Fedora is available in several different versions - either using
different desktops or slanted towards a particular type of user. These are
known as Fedora Spins and include the following:
Ubuntu
Variant
|
Desktop
|
Description
|
Standard
|
Gnome
|
Gnome edition
|
KDE Spin
|
KDE
|
KDE edition
|
Xfce Spin
|
Xfce
|
Xfce edition
|
LXDE Spin
|
LXDE
|
LXDE edition
|
Fedora Minimum Requirements
The minimum requirements for the current (20) release
of Fedora are:
- 1GHz
Processor
- 1
GB
- 10
GB free disc space
- DVD
drive or USB port (-for installation media)
The Advantages of Fedora
Fedora is a great choice for the more
experienced Linux hand but it is not, perhaps, the most user-friendly for the
novice..
Linux Fedora has two main strengths (-over and
above the usual Linux ones):
·
It champions new technologies: Red Hat uses it as a vehicle
for testing and proving technologies for release in its market-leading
commercial RHEL release
·
Reliability: in our experience Fedora 15 is extremely robust:
it seems to cope well with flakey hardware and any application failures are
confined to that application, rather than affecting the whole operating system
(-unlike, in our experience, Ubuntu 11.04)
The Disadvantages of Fedora
The main drawbacks of using Fedora are:
·
Fedora is a great choice for the more experienced Linux hand but
it is not, perhaps, the most user-friendly for the novice, with the user often
having to resort to the the command line to complete common tasks.
Particular issues we've had are:
- If the Software
Updater has two packages from different sources, it can be
difficult to track down the offending package (-if we have a lot of
updates pending) and to fix it without resorting to yum on
the command line, which is confusing to most newcomers.
·
There are nowhere near as
many applications available for Fedora as for Ubuntu -
and those that are often need to be installed via the command line or by
adding custom repositories (-such as RPM Fusion).
·
Fedora is quite large and requires a reasonably capable machine
to run effectively (-see the minimum requirements). If our machine is
particularly old (-and we can't upgrade it) then we may be better off with
something like Puppy instead.
·
Fedora 18 in particular is, by default, quite locked-down
security-wise. This means the user may need to spend time tweaking the security
in order to run certain applications.
·
Fedora lacks support for any proprietary formats (-such as Flash, MP3, MP4,
etc) meaning that the user will have to enable a secondary repository (-such
as RPM Fusion and install and configure all these things manually.
2. Debian:
Debian is a free operating system
(OS) for our computer.
An operating system is
the set of basic programs and utilities that make wer computer run.
Debian provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 51000 packages; precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy
installation on our machine.
Debian’s primary
advantages are:
·
It’s strict on open-source, by default. It comes with no
proprietary software pre-installed, and the repositories enabled by default
contain no proprietary software. It’s even stricter on open-source in this
regard than Fedora, as Fedora has binary blobs on its kernel, Debian doesn’t
any more (some older releases did). This is also a possible disadvantage, which
is to be mentioned later.
·
It’s has the largest open-source community project in history
behind it, the Debian Project, with almost a thousand volunteers.
·
It supports the most architectures of any binary Linux
distribution. I said “binary” as Gentoo, a source distribution, has support for
slightly more. If we believe DistroWatch Debian supports 9 architectures (as of
8 December 2017), while Gentoo supports 12, or 10 if we group all the 32-bit
x86 architectures together.
·
Its package format, deb, is the most popular among software
developers that package for the Linux platform. Granted deb packages often are
not compatible with all Debian-based distributions, usually they’re just
compatible with the precise distribution they were designed for and usually
that distribution is Ubuntu, a Debian derivative.
·
It, and its derivatives, has the most derivatives of any Linux
distribution known.
·
It is the second eldest currently-maintained Linux distribution,
after Slack ware.
·
It’s flexible, in two ways. Both the ‘branch’ we can be on,
hence how bleeding-edge v/s stable
the software we use will likely be, and also in the sense we can choose from
several different options in the installer. The installer lets we choose to
have a minimal system with only the command-line, or one with a desktop
environment, with or without several other utilities like printing abilities.
There are four, sometimes five branches that
are actively maintained. The branches that are always supported include:
o oldstable
— the previous stable release of Debian. This is presently Debian 8 or Jessie.
Packages in this branch are by-in-large old, >3 years old to be precise.
o stable
— the current stable release of Debian, which is presently Debian 9 or Stretch.
Packages in this repository can get fairly old but as the latest stable release
was earlier this year they’re not that old yet.
o testing
— this branch contains newer packages, that started out in the unstable branch,
but have been adequately tested to be deemed stable enough to land in this
branch. Eventually packages in the testing repository are frozen and used to
create the next stable release of Debian. By “frozen” I mean the packages are
tested further and the only changes are bug and security fixes, no version
bumps.
o unstable
(sid) — this branch can be thought of as akin to a bleeding-edge rolling
release model distribution as it contains the very latest packages the Debian
developers have packaged (although beware rolling distribution users these
packages aren’t as bleeding-edge as Arch’s). Although that’s not to say that
every package therein is all that new, for example, their Eclipse (the
IDE)-related packages are some 5 years old (aside from the odd bug/security
fix).
The
branch that is sometimes available is old stable, presently Debian 7 or Wheezy,
which as someone can probably guess are super-ancient.
Its disadvantages
include:
·
That it’s so strict on open-source. There is a non-free
repository for it, but it just contains device drivers and firmware. Being so
strict on open-source, by default, means that if we have devices that need
proprietary drivers, including WiFi cards, we’ll need to connect to the net,
add the non-free repository, and install the required packages from it. This
can be a problem if the problem bit of hardware is wer WiFi card and we rely
solely on WiFi to the connect to the internet.
·
(Depending on wer point of view) That it uses systemd. I have no
problem with systemd, but many people do. The reason for these problems can be
technical, but quite often they’re at least partly philosophical. systemd
violates the Unix philosophy, which is that every component of a Unix or
Unix-like system like Linux should do just one thing and do it well. System,
depending on whom we ask, may do its jobs well but it does more than just one
thing, hence violating this principle.
I know
of two main Debian derivatives that use different init systems. AntiX and
Devuan, both of which use Debian’s former init system before the release of
Debian 8 in 2015, SysV init.
·
That even its unstable branch has some really outdated software.
That and even the more bleeding-edge of the unstable branch’s software tends to
be less bleeding-edge than that of Arch Linux, among other distributions.
·
That its package manager, APT, can be confusing to some in its
syntax. Namely that there are so many commands belonging to it like apt-cache,
apt-get, add-apt-repository, etc. This is somewhat less of a
problem now that a simple apt command
is out which combines the most common actions from the various commands of the
APT package manager.
·
That package management from a cheroot into it can cause
problems (and yes I am counting when the file systems like proc, dev and sys,
are properly mounted up), especially if what one is installing or updating are
kernel modules or the kernel itself. It’s not unique in this, RPM-based
distributions, especially Fedora, seem a little touchy in this regard. I’m an
Archer/Gentoo-er so being able to cheroot into it is very important to us.
·
That packaging for Debian is more complicated than it is for any
other distribution I am aware of. What is so complicated is that with most
package managers we merely write one file to specify the package’s details
(excluding source files like patches), including how it is to be built, while
with Debian we have to write a whole directory worth of files.
3. SuSe:
SUSE
Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) is a Linux-based operating system developed
by SUSE. It is designed for servers, mainframes,
and workstations but can be
installed on desktop computers for
testing as well. Major versions are released at an interval of 3–4 years, while
minor versions (called "Service Packs") are released about every 18
months. SUSE Linux Enterprise products, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server,
receive more intense testing than the openSUSE community product, with the intention that only
mature, stable versions of the included components will make it through to the
released enterprise product.
Their name at founding was "S.u.S.E" and it was chosen as a German acronym for
"Software und System-Entwicklung", which means "Software and
systems development".
Advantages
·
Extensibility and minimalistic qualities of almost any installed
piece of software.
·
No bundle ware, bloat ware, no viruses, no problems with
official repositories in general.
·
Drivers are usually cleaner than proprietary operating systems
and more maintained, usually it's also more compatible than other systems, but
not given credit, because most people only whine when it doesn't work!
·
Documentation and online-resources are top notch and usually
have many sides of the same story, which makes it an ideal learning
environment.
Disadvantages
·
Fragmentation in terms of distros, user-interfaces (QT, GTK,
etc.), packages.
·
Hardware-manufacturers don't see Linux as a market share worth
considering and hence you will eventually find some (brand-new or obscure
mostly) hardware that sadly doesn't run on Linux.
·
You have to walk across the "dead bodies" of
Linux-elitism stereotypes. (Like any other community some forums and
IRC-channels are bad, some people are rude, some are like RTFM, and some are
just).
·
You eventually will be challenged, somehow (Can be argued to
Neutral).
4. Slack Ware:
Slack ware is a Linux
distribution created by Patrick Volkerding in 1993. Originally
based on Soft landing Linux System, Slack ware has been the basis for many
other Linux distributions, most notably the first versions of SUSE Linux distributions,
and is the oldest distribution that is still maintained.
Slack ware
aims for design stability and simplicity and to be the most "Unix-like" Linux
distribution.
Advantage:
·
Slack ware is the most stable version of Linux.
·
It is
also (perhaps) the fastest version of Linux, and because Slack ware relies
heavily on the usage of the Command Line, Slack ware basically forces you to
actually learn “how to (properly) use Linux”.
Disadvantage:
·
It uses old versions of most packages (e.g. it still uses KDE
Plasma 4 even though Plasma 5 came out in mid 2014) and new releases of the
distribution are infrequent.
· It has a relatively small
official repository, although the unofficial Slack Builds project provides
several more you can build for Slack ware.
· few desktop environments / window managers are
officially available for Slack ware too, like GNOME and i3 are not.
Note: However, if you feel
you may be dependent on GUI's (graphic user interfaces) such as how things are
done in Windows, Mac & Android, then Slack ware is definitely not for you.
In short, if you really wish to learn Linux and/or you need rock solid
stability - for use as a server, for example - then Slack ware is the best
choice.
Linux distribution in Computing Industry (part-1)