Redhat vs Mandrake

[anunay]

Hi,

I'm planning to install Linux on my lappy. Which one should I go for - Redhat or Mandrake ? What r the pros and cons of both ? I'm thinking of assigning 1 or 2 GB of disk space of for the Linux partition. What about the swap partition size ? Somewhere I read that swap partition size should be double of Ram size, then in case of my sager it come to 2GB !!.

Please Advice
-Anunay

[denkc]

You may not need a swap partition for 1 gig of ram. I've never used Redhat, but I can guarantee you that Mandrake is an easy install. It doesn't have so many confusing things, has a nice install screen, but considering that Redhat has been around longer and that I haven't used it, you may want to ask someone who has.

Mandrake is a fine OS. It will partition the HD for you when you install, probably also make a swap partition for you, which you may not like so much.

I'm trying to install Debian right now and I'm having lots of trouble and I'll experiment with Redhat. I'll probably end up going back to mandrake though.

Have you used Linux before?

[anunay]

Thanks for your prompt reply. Yes I've done some shell programming before and I'm quite comfortable with Linux. But I've not tried out mandrake. I just wanted to know what r your opinions 'bout it. And this my first time Linux installation on m/c with 1 gig ram. All the earlier m/c had 16 mb - 64 mb of RAM (lol).

[denkc]

heh, when I installed mandrake I had 64 MB of ram. Now i got 192, but not like it matters; Linux doesn't take a lot of ram anyway.

I liked mandrake; it was visually pleasing. I've never tried Red Hat, how was it?

[Dragon57]

Mandrake is based on Red Hat, so the underlying stuff is pretty much the same. Mandrake just takes a version of Red Hat and recompiles their customizations into it.

Madrake is the easiest to install, Red Hat has the biggest installed base between the two.

Mandrake tends to be on the bleeding edge, whereas Red Hat is more careful in their releases.

Swap space calculations depend on what you want to do with the OS. If you are going to be running a lot of apps at the same time, have a big database going, etc, then go for 1.5 to 2 times ram size. If you are just messing around with it, 1x should be fine.

Hope this helps.

Martin Parrott

[denkc]

All linux is basically the same. But wow, that did help, Dragon. It took mandrake 9 versions before they allowed a feature that would allow you to upgrade without downloading a new CD. =P

I thought that with 1 gig of ram, you wouldn't need such a big swap space?

[Dragon57]

Concerning the swap space, you are supposed to have some amount configured as the OS is written to use it, even if it doesn't really need to. All modern operating systems are like this. They cache open files up in memory to speed up operations. That is why I mentioned the database use.

If you will be running any kind of database, you will need at least a swap size of 2X times regular memory. Postgresql, MySQL and Oracle will literally bring a Linux system to it's knees if you don't have a large swap space configured and the database is of any size.

As I said before, if you are just playing around with it, don't be too concerned about it. Give it some small amount of swap, 128MB-512MB, and let the install continue. You should be fine. If you do run short of swap later, you can always add some by allocating some unused space or creating a swap file on an already mounted file system.

Hope this helps,
Martin Parrott

[anunay]

Hi Dragon,

Your post clarifies my doubt regarding swap partition's size.

Thanks a lot
Anunay

[Wisefish]

I also would like to install LINUX but I don't know which version would be easiest for me to use. I have used windows all of mu life and am very familiar with that. Any recomondations would help. I am leaning towards SUSE or REDHAT.
thanks

[Icefluxx]

i would have to go with mandrake. i have suse...well, you all know, but thus far mandrake man, mandrake.

[denkc]

I think mandrake is probaby the best for the windows to linux transition, but people generally move on to debian or gentoo when they get used to linux.

[laclasse]

Don't fall into the trap guys, yes usually swap should be around 2x your Actyual RAM, but this become untrue past 512 Megs ram. Do not use 1 Gig swap if ya have 512 MB RAM, 512 Meg for swap is more than enough !!! It saves Disk space too ;)

[laclasse]

Linux now has complex mechanisms similar to the 'CacheFS' on Solaris. Databases like MySQL, Oracle can take huge advantage of this as the swap isn't that badly needed. Nowadays computers have so much ram, that apart when dll larges files from intranet and watching a movie fullscreen at the same time, swap is barely used at full. I have 125 Megs swap on a small box for 256 Meg RAM, with no problem. But has stated before 2xRAM is usually a good idea for swap, to a certain limit.

Mandrake and RH can be both recommended for starting learning linux. They are graphic, user orientated and powerful. The main problem is the tweaking brought to classic component such has gcc(compiler), kernel, VitrualMemory, X window is so advanced that it doesn't teach one the traditionnal 'Linux/Unix' environnement. It proves hard too to find out on their sites which patches are used on which kernel for example :eek:. Umm, remind me of something...no can't be, or could it become ? It has proven hard for new users for example to recompile a kernel on RH/MDK without using the kernel srcs supplied from their sites. A kernel from www.kernel.org will not work. Umm still linux is it ?If you want to use Linux FAST, only as a user, then they are good to keep.
On the other hand, when you want real 'FREEDOM', installing only what you want and need , and as well LEARNING another way of using a computer than windows, then after feeling comfortable with shells and majority of linux commands, i recommend moving away to more 'bare' no bells-and-whisttles distribution like GNU/Debian, Gentoo, more traditionnal UNIX: Slackware, BSDs (Free, Net and Open) or hardcore LFS as Linux From Scratch ( vers 4.0 out ) :cheers: :smash:

Can't wait for the sager....friday...:cool:

[ecadman]

First off, the amount of swap space needed greatly depends on the types of software you are running. If you run multiple programs which require lots of memory, you will need lots of swap space available. In my case, I run IC designs. The last thing I want is to have a job crash because of not enough memory (including swap). I can live with the slow speed of hard drive access as long as I control when the job ends. I double or triple my physical memory.

For gaming, the slow access of swap space is not acceptible so therefore you only need enough swap space to handle the overhead programs. In this case 512 Mg is probably enough.



Now for my problem.

I have to use RedHat for some of the software I run. The software vendors I use do not support thier software on other distributions. I am looking into the Sagger 8886 or 8887 with 3.06 Ghz processor, 1 Gig ram (I wish it was 2 Gig), and a fast hard drive. I need the USB, network, and other features working. Has anyone successfully installed RedHat 8.0 onto this machine? How about RedHat 7.2? If I have to drop down to an older machine to get RedHat working, I will. But I would like the fastest laptop and most memory available.


Thank you for your help.

[NeoCORE]

I can say that I did successfully install redhat 8.1 onto my 8886, and MDK, both of them installed with a few changes at the command line booting during install... and in redhats case, this continued until I recompiled the kernel... to get the install to work, use "nousb nopcmcia noprobe" for rh and "noauto" for mdk...


Good luck :)

NeoCORE