Fragmenting - Sort of - Depends (Score 1)

I actually have a case in point where recently I installed Linux-Mandrake 6.0 (RedHat 6.0 plus StarOffice and some other junk) yes -- slap me with a dead trout because that was *dumb* First of all installing any RH*.0 has been known to be a dnagerous past time. Add mandrake-soft's tweaking to it and you might have a problem. In essence, regardless of the WM, Xfree86 version, utils or whatever, X would destroy my memory and wreak havoc on the ext2 because after reboot the fs was out of sync. I ran a bunch of X stuff through gdb and lefence to no avail and franky, I was running out of time on a project. I snagged slakware 4.0 (I started out on Slakware 1.0.13) and ran it through a variety of "as close as I can replicate it" tests and nothing even near the same level of disasters was occuring (although I did manage a nice xemacs core dump - I am rather proud of that). So - if I had the time, I would have found the problem (and am in fact still running the mdk distro on a stronger system to see if I can find the evil code) because I know how, but, not everyone does. Here there may have been a case of code tweaking (I have not gotten a confirm or denial from Mandrake - actually I haven't heard anything at all) or some mismatched guts. Now, as a matter of record, I did buy Mandrake 6.0 in a rush without thinking it through. On that occasion I had bashed my previous distro and the CD was shot and - once again - I was on a project and needed a system like THAT DAY so I pretty much deserved what I got. With Slakware 4.0 I mulled over it for several weeks until finally asking around and getting the answers I wanted. I do not think Linux is fragmenting nearly as much or as rapidly as UNIX did, but I do think that potential users need be aware that the fallacy of composition does exist within the confines of Linux distros - what works on one does not neccessarily work on the other even if the kernel is the same. The point to remember is Linux can be just as complex as UNIX (which is how some of us like it) and critical thinking has to come into play before picking up a distro. In the past it was easy, you had Slak and RH. One non-commercial and one commercial (respectively). It is much more complex now and users need to have the capability in understanding the differences, where to find good data about distros and how to implement them.