European Unix Platform: Rock Linux: Not for woozies!

[ Thanks to Fred Mobach
for this link. ]

“And thus it came to pass that my buddy Pjotr Prins pointed me
to the existence of Rock Linux. In his unsurpassable style he
explained to me that Rock Linux would probably become *the* Linux
distribution for experienced Linux administrators and programmers
who were (or would get) tired by the all-singing-all-dancing Linux
distributions being put out by companies such as Red Hat, SuSE and
Mandrake. A couple of weeks later, Pjotr manned a little booth at
the NLUUG 1999 autumn conference, from which he sold stuff like
Hacker Keyboards, plush penguins *and* Rock Linux CDROMs. When
asked by someone what the particular advantage of this distribution
was he pointedly replied: “It is more difficult to install”.
Obviously, after such a sales pitch, I could not resist checking
out this new distribution.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I think the “traditional” (ha ha) Linux
distributors are doing a great job bringing Linux to the masses.
Their additions to the “raw” software include such niceties of life
as graphical installation programs, GUI driven control panels and
other “user friendly” extensions. For a very experienced Unix
hacker like myself, all this is becoming a bit too much; for
instance I really hate it when I change a configuration file like
/etc/resolv.conf, only for that change to get reversed at the next
run of the idiot-proof vendor-supplied configuration utility (such
as SuSEConfig). Another absolute no-no for me is a default alias
rm=’rm -i’ which I spotted in some distributions. These kind of
things instantly turn my spine in a blubbering piece of jelly and I
need to write at least three sendmail rewrite rules to recuperate
and regain my senses.”

“And so I decided to spent some of my valuable spare time
investigating whether Rock Linux (my nickname: The Rock) might
become my distribution of choice.”

Complete
Story