Josh Saddler

In the first part of this series, I began asking questions that are useful in determining the answer to the old question "Which distribution is right for me?" I examined hardware support and the package manager. This second part will look at maintaining the distribution and its available tools for the job, as well as its installation procedures.

Parts of this article are written with my own needs in mind, as I'm currently evaluating binary-based distros that can potentially replace Gentoo on my vintage 2001 Toshiba laptop, but the questions are universal enough that you should think about them the next time you're thinking about distributions.

Maintenance and Tools
As with its package manager, a distribution can live and die by how easy it is to configure and maintain -- are the tools sensible, powerful, and flexible, or are users forced to wade through the guts of their system in a noncoherent fashion? Is it possible to get under the hood of the distro, or is it too painful?

A. How is the distribution configured: graphical configuration utilities, CLI tools, manual editing of config files, or some blend of all three?
-- Which is recommended
-- Is it done as root or by any user? Or is it built around sudo?
B. Config file directories and filesystem layout
-- How are the directories structured, starting at /. Some distros pay more attention to the FHS than others, and some have found better ways to organize files. Where are things placed?
-- Are systemwide config files placed in /etc/, or somewhere else?
-- Kernel and bootloader-related file locations
-- What about startup and shutdown scripts and their associated config files? Not everyone uses SysV init, and there's plenty of differences even within that.
-- Other initscripts: where are they kept. Also, how easy is it to create your own and integrate with the existing system? There needs to be a sane way to keep track of starting and stopping services, as well as service dependencies.
-- X11 and desktop-related file locations
-- Package manager config file locations
C. Graphical configuration utilities: are any available, and if so, what kind? Step-by-step wizards, or something like general preferences windows.
-- Where are they found in menus and in the directory layout
-- Do they offer thorough coverage of the available settings. For example, is there a special all-in-one control center for the desktop or networking, etc.
-- Ease of use. No one likes using a painful tool that is completely counterintuitive. Linux shouldn't be painful!
-- Are they well-documented, comprehensible, and in the appropriate language (English in my case)
-- Where do they fall short of plain text editing?
-- Is there more than one tool available for a particular aspect of the system?
D. Automatic and semi-automatic utilities: are there any that can make routine or difficult tasks much easier? Gentoo has an eselect framework that does all this, as well as lots of handy admin tools from the gentoolkit package like revdep-rebuild, eread. Still other useful mini-tools are found in portage-utils, baselayout (rc)...the list goes on.
-- Are they scriptable?
-- Easy but powerful ways of managing things like Java plugins/VMs, kernel selection, OpenGL/X configuration, initscripts, etc.

Installation
While ease of installation can be the biggest selling point of a distro, I got started in Linux using Gentoo, so I'm used to the straight CLI step-by-step unscripted (though it's easily doable) manual installation process. The only things that phase me these days are installers that 1) don't offer enough configurability and 2) don't work.

A. Available methods: what kinds of installers are available?
-- Pure CLI (Hi, Gentoo!)
-- Graphical
-- ncurses-based
-- Which method is the cleanest for creating light, flexible, yet solid environments...aka "which one will work the best"
B. Installation media: what kind are available?
-- Minimal or full-featured LiveCDs, USB keys, netbooting, even DVDs packed with just about everything.
-- Does the media offer recovery options for failed installation or general system recovery? Need useful tools!
C. Filesystems and partitioning: what's in the default layout? I assume it's possible to specify my own partitioning scheme, but you never know...
-- Which filesystems are available? I've always been a ReiserFS user, but some distributions don't include the ability to install with anything more than ext2 or ext3.
D. Installation manual: is it well written? Comprehensive? Available in useful formats? Should be in understandable English.
E. How often are the installation media and installers updated?
-- How often does the installation process change?
-- Is the distro on a "rolling release" schedule, or is it it necessary to periodically download and install the new version?

That's it for part 2. In part 3, I'll examine the distribution's identity, or meta-questions about its users, developers, purpose, and other aspects. Stay tuned!