*NIX distribution thoughts

Since I listed as some of my interests being Free and Open Source software, I thought I would summarize some of my beginnings with different distributions. There really is little point in too much, overly dogmatic, flamewars concerning what is the "best" distro. When I use the term distro, I am also including all the other wonderful free Unix-Like OS's available , including the BSD's , etc ... . My advice is to start somewhere, learn all you can, then tailor your choice(choice being one of the prime benefits of the FOSS movement) to reflect your own priorities and goals in computing.

My personal priorities have always been somewhat along these lines:

• Stability -- I can't stand crashing software, esp. the proprietary, closed source type
• Security -- This includes ease of security updates and patches, esp. since I have for one reason or another been stuck with dialup internet access far too often in my life. I have always considered that if I am going to recommend the usage of a FOSS OS at my place of employment , ease of security updates will take a high priority. Ironically, I have been mentally holding FOSS to a higher standard, since the existing proprietary OS's already in use at my place of employment are "in the lax" in the updating dept.
  
• Simplicity -- A reliance on text-based configuration and not too much "automagical" stuff going on. Eye-Candy is nice, but I'm not sure its worth it.
• A Sane, dependable choice for a business application or other meaningful work. By this I don't necesarily mean one of the big supported players in the spirit of RedHat or Novell.
  

My first linux installations were Slackware 3.6 back in 1999( I don't remember now why I picked Slackware) This turned out to be a good learning experience and I still have a profound respect for Slackware's KISS principles. I used Slackware successfully to run a PHP-MySQL auction(real-time,live) system for a fund raiser sometime back in '03 or '04. Excellent performance and stability on modest hardware.

I also dabbled with RedHat(pre-Fedora days) actually using it at my employment for routing and a fileserver, again on very modest hardware. I also used the Freesco routing distro in various roles.

Debian Stable is currently my most used distro and it pretty much allows me to meet the goals stated above.Secure-Apt is now standard and addresses some of the issues with downloading software from the Internet.For example, how do you know what you are downloading hasn't been trojaned, etc ... . Its also handy for updating machines not connected to a broadband connection. Just copy the .deb packages(previously downloaded via apt) to /var/cache/apt/archives on the target machine, and away you go.

I have dabbled in FreeBSD and will continue, although I have found it difficult to keep updated(third-party ports).Portaudit is a very handy utility for checking your currently installed ports for vulnerabilities. The core system is actually easy(to update) , even on dialup . You have the choice of binary updates via freebsd-update or CVS with direct compilation. The compilation of the kernel and userland I have found to be very straight-forward and for lack of a better word "awesome".I have found the structure of FreeBSD to be very organized and "sane", for example, all third party ports and configs are placed in /usr/local . A FreeBSD-based server is probably easier to update with regards to ports than a GUI-heavy workstation. As an example, firefox seems to require constant updating( goes with the turf in being a browser and all ), but with all the dependencies , etc ... constant re-compilation grows painful fast.With dialup it becomes almost unthinkable.Currently, at my place of employment , I am using a FreeBSD-based machine as a Network Security Monitor in the spirit of http://www.taosecurity.com/ . As an aside and giving credit, Mr. Bejtlich's(of taosecurity ) books and ideas are very worthy reading.

Ubuntu has been receiving a lot of attention lately, but I haven't had the time to explore it much. My thoughts are, Ubuntu is based on Debian, why not just go to the "pure root" ? Also, the Universe package repository, if I understand correctly, does not receive proper security and bug updates. Ubuntu is also dependent upon Canonical, whereas Debian is Community-based.

Recently, I noticed the Minix project has been resurrected and has some interesting ideas. Plan9 also has some interesting concepts.Probably too much to explore in my lifetime/intellect, but again its wonderful to have a choice. These choices also make the options of learning about computing much greater. I hope to contribute to the FOSS in the best way I can.

Reading over this post, I realize my writing skills, if I ever had any are rusty. Perhaps this blog will turn out to be one way of polishing them.