Josh Saddler

As promised in a previous entry, here's the first half of a checklist I've been writing to help me evaluate other distributions. No doubt I think of more things when examining a distro, but here's a good start. Though some parts of it are definitely specific to my needs and hardware, most of the questions can be used by anyone, especially people (like myself) who prefer to install one distro and stick with it, rather than jump ship every few months.

I began assembling this list because I've started to shop around for binary distributions that could possibly replace Gentoo on my laptop. It's old, and compiling hurts. Replacing the hardware isn't an option, so I need something that can do most everything Gentoo can but not involve compiling unless for unpackaged software. Setting up a binhost and crosscompiling on another machine isn't desirable either. There are lots of binary distros out there, so it's time to put the candidates through the list.

For this first part of the series, I'll question the distribution's hardware support and its package manager.

Hardware
A. ACPI support: A must for any modern machine; it shouldn't suck extra energy or generate waste heat and noise if it can be avoided. This is usually at least in part kernel dependent, so that means the distro needs to have the right one available. Includes things like proper support for the fan, thermal zone, battery, screen dimming/blanking, sleep/suspend, CPU scaling...
-- Fn keys and special buttons: in addition to kernel support, some distros include packages for managing laptop special keys, such as the ones on my woefully under-supported Toshiba
B. PCMCIA support: Wifi cards!
C. HDD: how hard will the disk be hit overall? Gentoo hits up the hard disk pretty hard simply because of all the compiling (having only 128MB RAM also hurts)
D. Kernel: which sources are available? What's installed by default? Are there any special patchsets applied? Also, what's enabled by default -- watch out for bloated modular kernels like...*coughUBUNTUcough*
E. Chipset feature support: I suppose this is a summary of the above; how does it compare to other distros? Do things like USB, Firewire, network controllers, etc. work.
F. Bitness: for x86 and x86-64, how mature is the distribution? Does it emphasize multilib or a pure environment of some sort?

Package Manager
Ah, now we come to it. Distros can live and die by the ease of use of the package manager, and by what's available. Let's take a closer look.

A. Tree structure: how is the official repository set up? Does it contain a comprehensive list, or only core packages? Are third party/community repos available or necessary, and are they worthwhile or significant?
-- I'd prefer a one-stop shop for all my needs, so is there one available?
B. How many official/supported package managers are available? How do they rank compared to each other?
-- The all-important "Which is easiest to use" and "Which is the most flexible" questions.
C. Binary package repository: the distro must have a significant number of binary packages available (ideally all)
D. Source packages: for packages that must be compiled from source, how easy does the PM make the job
-- Is it necessary to install any development tools? Is this easy to do? Are they included by default?
E. Searchable repository: is the repo searchable locally or online?
-- What tools are available for this task? Ease of use?
F. Installing packages:
-- Dependency tracking: does the PM properly pull in or build all required dependencies?
-- Flexibility: can dependencies be optionally specified during installation? The goal is to decrease bloat.
-- What about upgrades and downgrades; are they easy to work with? Should there be small constant upgrades to avoid breakages, or will periodic major system-wide updates work okay?
-- Uninstalling: will it leave cruft or make a clean sweep.
G. Optimization: No, not ricing. For which architectures are binary packages targeted? If the PM supports source compiling, how easy is it to specify CPU (sub)arch, CFLAGS, etc.
-- For my laptop, i686 or Pentium3 is preferred, along with MMX and SSE.
H. Available packages: how large is the selection? Gentoo is pretty famous for having one of the largest package trees of any distro.
-- Which architectures are packages available for (for example, Gentoo has a good number of packages available for just about anything Linux runs on)
-- How many versions are available for typical packages? Especially for version-sensitive apps such as Wine, dbus, hal, madwifi-ng, wpa_supplicant, etc.
-- Are there multiple choices for each package category? For example, is there a default desktop environment such as Xfce, but Gnome or KDE can also be installed.
-- How close to "upstream" are packages kept? Just as intended, or with a few modifications? Includes things like where packages are installed to.
-- Does the distro mark its packages with any kind of branding or identity when they are installed?
-- Are the packages targeted to or sufficient for the needs of certain kinds of users? Are there plenty of things like Java development packages, XML/text packages, lots of FPS games, etc.

Well, that's it for the first part. In Part 2 of this series, I'll ask questions about the distribution's maintenance & tools, and about its installation procedures. Part 3 will examine the distribution's "identity," or meta-questions about the distribution itself, its users, and its development.

Stay tuned in the coming days for the next two parts!