Re: Red Hat vs Debian, installing a POP server. Security

For running servers, especially in a business environment where one
wants predictability, Debian is a huge win over RedHat. (However I
admit that I get annoyed at Linux too often in this setting; I use
OpenBSD or FreeBSD. My biggest beef is that config files are all over
the place. With the BSDs you know everything's in /etc. I don't like
modules either, too much variability. I'm not afraid of recompiling
anything, and in a server setting I do, so I can ensure it's a
minimal set of features.)

In desktop usage, I think RedHat does fine. Good integration with xft
so anti-aliased fonts are used by most applications. (I use quite a
few old X11 apps that don't use xft.) So what if it installs and runs
things like gpm that I never use? Doesn't hurt anything. It also does
a good job of automatically detecting all kinds of hardware. I'm
surprised at the one message where he stayed logged in as root the
whole time. That's just asking for trouble! I know that on RedHat
systems, if you run something that needs super-user rights, it puts up
a dialog asking for the root password.

-s