From: pmacdona@sanjuan (Peter MacDonald)
Subject: Re: Which is better for novice??? SLS or MCC-INTERIM!!!
Organization: University of Victoria, Victoria B.C. CANADA
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 21:23:30 GMT

In article <1992Nov10.200935.507@victrola.sea.wa.us> vince@victrola.sea.wa.us (Vince Skahan) writes:
>u9030062@golum.riv.csu.edu.au ("Ronald Ku") writes:
>>	For a novice of linux like me, I am confused by SLS and
>>MCC-INTERIM versions of linux. In some of the README files in many sites
>>recommend to install SLS or MCC-INTERIM for the first time. But what is
>>the different between these two versions of linux? Are they the clones of
>>the "real linux"? 
>
>>	SLS seem to be more compete and welly organise. Is it better
>>than MCC-INTERIM in performance and portability? Could anyone advice me
>>which one should I start with and what would be the advantages?
>
>my experience (for what little it's worth :-)) is that mcc-interim seems
>more stable.  However, it's basically an o/s package and doesn't have the
>extras (mail, uucp, gnu, x, etc...) that SLS has.
>

SLS may seem less stable because you see more posts about it, but there
could be another reason: maybe more people are using it.
From Teds posting of Mid October:


> Top 15 Most Popular Archive Sections By Bytes Transferred
>                                                  ---- Percent  of ----
>      Archive Section      Files Sent Bytes  Sent Files Sent Bytes Sent
> ------------------------- ---------- ----------- ---------- ----------
> pub/linux/packages/SLS          3408  1099775360    50.11      50.36
> pub/linux/packages                19   288390238     0.28      13.21
> pub/linux/packages/GCC           814   287096369    11.97      13.15
> pub/linux/packages/X11           384   221662483     5.65      10.15
> pub/linux/mirrors/mcc-int         71    29282074     1.04       1.34
> pub/linux/docs                   139    23600002     2.04       1.08
> pub/linux/packages/TeX            53    20413127     0.78       0.93
> pub/linux/sources/usr.bin         66    20392458     0.97       0.93
> pub/linux                        186    20131222     2.73       0.92
> pub/linux/images                  73    19950848     1.07       0.91
> pub/linux/sources/system          85    18696914     1.25       0.86
> pub/linux/packages/lisp           27    17626303     0.40       0.81
> pub/linux/packages/emacs-         57    16671741     0.84       0.76
> pub/linux/binaries/usr.bi        107    15651344     1.57       0.72
> pub/linux/binaries/usr.bi         54     9803411     0.79       0.45


It would seem that there are 50 times more traffic on the SLS than MCC.
Not to knock MCC, its a fine package and SLS even contains some parts 
from it.  And of course this could mean that most people get MCC from its 
source archive than tsx-11.  Also SLS is bigger than MCC.

It should also be noted that SLS is also much more evolutionary.  Patches
and new components appear regularly, so that people can stay current just
by downloading the new components.  Unfortunately, not everyone is so 
diligent about keeping up with the latest patches, so the result is that
even a month after a problem is fixed, we keep seeing posts about it.
Case in point:  "shell-init" and permission denied because no-read for 
non-root users on /.

Peter
pmacdona@sanjuan.uvic.ca
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux