what's the difference in the distros?

[Siplus]

what is the difference in the main distros like redhat, slackware, debian, mandrake, suse, ext. what have then done to make all of these distros of linux so different that people chose their 'favorite one'...i would dl some different ones to see what is different, but i had a hard enough time getting the 3 cd redhat 8 dls from my friend w/ a cable modem....

[Doctor V]

Thats the question isn't it.  I love the site www.distrowatch.com as it gives a good comparison of the different distros, and list what software they have.  Yes, most Linux distro's use most of the same software, but one may be a little more up to date than others.  They also vary as far as language support goes.  The differences are generally small, but sometimes a small difference can go a long way.  With so many distros in existance, its not convenient to try them all, I choose Mandrake first because it supported Japanese and was geared towards newbies, then I decided to try redhat bacuse it has more up to date apps than Mandrake, and is supposed to run faster.

V

[Calum]

well, siplus, if you want a fun tour of some linux dostros without downloading a huge distro then try JailBait Linux which is only 16MB, BasicLinux which is based on slackware linux but is a lot smaller or Floppix which is based on Debian/GNU/Linux.

Also, Check out the Woven Goods For Linux site for a list of other small linux distributions. Their list of distributions looks like it rivals, or even exceeds the selection offered at Linuxiso.org!

[ November 20, 2002: Message edited by: Calum: Linux Commando ]