Tor Olav Kristensen <tor### [at] toberemovedgmailcom> wrote:
> http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

  That was actually an interesting read. With so many distros it's very
hard to follow what their differences and design principles are. That's
a superb summary of them.

  It also clarified for me where some of the common misconceptions about
Linux are coming from. For example:

  "In Linux when you want to configure anything you have to edit obscure
files in obscure system directories using a text editor."

  That's quite clearly based on the design philosophy of Slackware, which
aims to provide a basic vanilla Unix system without the overhead and
inherent instability of the bells, whistles and eyecandy of most other
distros. Of course this philosophy, while more popular 15 years ago, is
nowadays almost exclusive to Slackware (and a few less known distros based
on it or on the same principle).

  "When you want to install new software, you have to always compile it
from sources."

  This is obviously based on the design of Gentoo, where indeed the entire
software management (and the even the installation of the OS itself) is
based on source code packages which are compiled for the computer in
question (the basic idea being that when the software is compiled for
that computer, it's more optimized specifically for it).
  Also this is nowadays a design feature almost exclusive to Gentoo, and
quickly losing popularity (because the advantage of a per-computer based
optimized compilation gives nowadays less and less speed benefits over
more generic binary distributions).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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