Re: [SLUG] Distributions

[Jeff Waugh <jdub@nospam.aphid.net>]

> Not wanting to start another Religious War (which this probably will), but 
> who is using which distro for what ?  What is "the best", if this can be 
> quantified ?
> 
> Does anyone have any constructive thoughts on this ?


I will attempt to do this without attracting flamage. ;)

I've just moved from RedHat 6.x to Debian 2.2 on my desktop machine, and
I've been using it recently on the new SLUG server.

First off, I can say that I don't think I'll use anything else for a while,
desktop or server. I'm that convinced. I'm a new Debian user.


1) Installation

   Simple enough. The installation process is more spartan than others, but
   getting it onto your system is quick and painless. The major difficulty
   with Debian as it stands is a piece of software called dselect.

   It would be a hard task to sanely list the 4500+ packages available in a
   Debian installation regardless of the method, but dselect really is royal
   pain in the proverbial. Don't be thinking that I like RedHat's "click on
   the little package icon" method either, I'm a picky SOB. ;)


2) Configuration

   Once you're past dselect (basically, you can tell it to naff off pretty
   quickly), you can start doing things by hand, and on Debian, it's a
   dream!

   The default install gave me most things I was interested in, but there
   were a few pieces of software I don't use on my desktop machine:

      apt-get remove apache

   Done! Debian uses exim as it's MTA, and I much prefer another piece of
   software:

      apt-get install another-mta

   And here's where Debian is cool - it regards an MTA as a subsystem,
   because you'd normally only run one. It removed exim and put on my
   preferred MTA. Cool.

   Everything else worked this way too. I got a list of installed packages
   and just removed all the junk I didn't want. apt would always tell me if
   it relied on something, so I didn't screw anything up.

   The scary thing is you can see something on Freshmeat that sounds
   interesting, and instead of fartarsing around downloading it manually,
   you can just type:

      apt-get install cool-new-freshmeat-thing

   And nine times out of ten, it'll tell you how big it is, and if you'd
   like to confirm the install.

   I *like* that.


3) Administration

   Debian is nice and clean. Everything seems to be in a place that makes
   sense, and given the strict policies ruling packages, you can rely on
   this in the future.

   There's also nothing like typing:

      apt-get update
      apt-get upgrade

   on your server machine. Update grabs the most recent package list, and
   upgrade pulls in the ones you need, working out all your dependencies for
   you. So much less hassle for me than it was before.

   If you're looking for software on the bleeding edge, or stuff that you
   can't find in Debian normally, you need only add a line to your
   sources.list file. I get Wine nightly builds this way, no additional
   work required - now that's cool!


4) Bugs

   You may wonder why I'm calling bugs cool, but I'm going to say it anyway.
   When there's a bug in Debian, it's cool, and it's fun.

   I had a problem with Samba on my woody machine: Whenever I shut down, my
   network interface was brought down before the Samba shares were
   unmounted. This hung the machine, which I could see as a disasterous
   thing to happen to a server.

   I ran "reportbug" and it led me through submitting a bug. In about 2
   minutes, it was mailing it off to the "base" maintainer. Foolish me, I
   hadn't told reportbug the right package! An hour and a half later, I got
   a confirmation of my bug submission.

   In two days, my bug had been sent to the correct maintainer, filed and
   fixed. All progess reported back to me. I was even thanked - and
   congratulated because I managed to say it was my first bug report! ;)

   There's a difference between using an operating system, and feeling like
   you're involved. :)


I don't have anything against RedHat... I'm no zealot. I just don't enjoy
using it anymore - I actually really *enjoy* using Debian.

Remember, you asked! :)

- Jeff


-- jdub@nospam.aphid.net -------------------------------------------------

   w: http://advogato.org/person/jdub/
   i: 16341281 (jdub!)
   q: "In addition to these ample facilities, there exists a
       powerful configuration tool called gcc." - Elliot Hughes,
	   author of lwm

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