[lug] Debian is better?

[Nate Duehr]

My reasons I run both Debian and RedHat... and have for many years...

Debian:

ENFORCED Filesystem policy... anything placed where it doesn't meet 
filesystem policy is a release-critical BUG.

Over 11,000 pre-packaged programs in "unstable" and many thousands in 
"stable" release.

RedHat:

Working toward FHS, but so many third-party RPM's are needed that never 
go through RedHat's QA process or are not "official" -- what's the 
point?  One idiot's RPM and now things are all over the place... at 
least the package manager can UN-install that mess.  :-)

RedHat REALLY falls down in the realm of number of packages... they only 
do what I would consider "core" packages and leave the rest to others 
with no consistency or quality checking on other's work...

RPM's from anywhere other than RedHat themselves must always be looked 
at with suspicion... and there's a LOT of them.

Debian:

Multiple platforms.  AWESOME that I can run the exact same stuff with 
the exact same configurations on a PC, my iMac, Sparc, and maybe my iPaq 
(arm) (if I get brave... heh...), etc.

RedHat:

Flopped on this one again too... dropping Sparc support REALLY ticked me 
off... we were USING that for real business purposes.

Debian:

(Okay time to pick on them...)

REALLY crappy installer that doesn't detect hardware well at all nor set 
up networking or X very well.  Generally takes much more time to put on 
a laptop, for example... especially a relatively new laptop with little 
docs or support for a newer video chipset.  Sound setup really really 
really really sucks.  No automated install support directly in the 
installer.

RedHat:

Good installer.  Kickstart saves my life in the workplace... multiple 
box installs quickly are a "no problem" type of thing anymore.  X gets 
set up right 98% of the time, and sound usually works "out-of-the-box" too.

Debian:

apt-get's great, the ability to browse through 11,000 packages in 
dselect is a great way to find new tools... just reading through the 
descriptions... hey wow... I didn't know THAT existed!  Found a serial 
port to serial port "sniffer" project one day that way...

RedHat:

up2date's great... but... I paid for a subscription.  People who DON'T 
pay for them can sign up with multiple account logins and passwords and 
schedule all their machines to update at the same time.  I "played by 
the rules" and bought a subscription for one machine... and put all the 
others under the same account... I have to go move that entitlement and 
the "extra free one" around manually while I know of any number of folks 
who cheat the system and update ten machines at midnight.  I think it'd 
be nice if RedHat would set it up so that there was more benefit to 
buying the service -- like without a subscription you can only update 
once a week or something similar.  Right now I'm considering not 
re-upping and just switching to apt-get on RedHat.

Debian:

BEAUTIFUL pre-install and post-install scripts and default 
configurations.  apt-get php  ... oh, I see you don't have php enabled 
in apache, would you like me to do that for you?  Wondeful laziness and 
a relatively good feeling that "it'll just work" after you install it 
AND the default installation will be relatively secure and have sane 
default settings... EVEN if the upstream folks give examples with BAD 
default settings.

RedHat:

Plain vanilla config files - maybe by design.  Up until RH 8.0 few 
packages would "auto-integrate" with each other on install like the 
above example.

Debian:

debian.openprojects.net - IRC channel goodness.  Officially supported.

EASY to use bug-tracking/reporting system...

Good e-mail lists.  Active.  But sometimes too active.  All the ugly 
warts are visible of the organization which is good to see and bad to 
have to read... so to speak.

RedHat:

Support costs money or many days waiting.  No official IRC channel. 
Although I'm sure all the Raleigh geeks hang out somewhere...

Bugzilla's user interface sucks. (personal opinion.)

E-mail lists?  I get a lot of junk from them.

Debian:

No mindshare.  No way I'd ever get anyone to use it at the office.

RedHat:

It's "the standard".


And this one will be controversial...

Debian:

Debian Free-Software Guidelines ENFORCED.  If you don't select 
"non-free" archives for packages, you are virtually GUARANTEED to have 
NO LEGAL PROBLEMS EVER with your Free As-in-Freedom Software.

RedHat:

There have definitely been some controversial packages included with 
RedHat over the years.  Heck, by the letter of the license from UW, for 
example... RedHat shouldn't be redistributing binary copies of Pine, for 
example.  Just as a simple example.


I use both.  I like RedHat to use on desktops, laptops, etc.  I like 
Debian on my servers.  I don't "get" to put Debian on as many servers as 
I'd like because RedHat's marketing engine is bigger. (Quite frankly 
that's the ONLY reason... people at the office know about RedHat, they 
are leery of Debian because they've never "seen" it before.  Sounds like 
another OS we all know and love, eh?)


There's some more positives for RedHat so I don't sound like I'm bashing 
them, but I'm falling asleep on the keys here....

Zzzzzzzz..

Nate