On 11/10/10 10:44 AM, ken wrote:
Alternatively, you could also check out Slackware.
In my opinion Slackware is still the best distribution for actually learning about GNU/Linux. I'm a little biased, though, I've been running it since 4.0 (and had accounts on other systems running it prior to that).
The last time I looked at it (several years ago) it didn't use rpm or apt or any package management system at all, just tgz files.
Recently that's changed to .txz for the greater level of compression, but oterwise it's the same. Pkgtool is really simple and straight forward.
This is what Linux used to be before there was a redhat... and it's generally how code files are handled in development before they become rpms... or whatever.
Slack is great because of its strong adherance to the KISS principle.
Source code shouldn't scare anyone. It's interesting stuff and harmless... just text files, after all. If your students are going to hack around with it and compile it (which I would hope they would do), then of course you'll want to take appropriate measures.
Yep. I still don't see why some people are so afraid of:
./configure [options] make make install [make clean]
If it doesn't work it will tell you.
Regards, Ben