[lug] Debian is better?

[David Morris]

On Wed, Dec 18, 2002 at 06:27:55AM -0700, ljp wrote:
> 
> /me thinks debian is overrated.

I would agree that many people over-rate Debian (see a
previous email in the thread I wrote), but there are some
things that are a rather good idea.  Keep in mind again,
though, that Debian is *not* for your average user!  What it
lacks is "Whiz-boom-bah there it is!", it makes up in other
areas...such as package management I mention below.  A few
other benefits not commonly mentioned include a very small
possible install base (I dare you to install RedHat in 100
MB), ease of remote management, and stability.

> Every debian install I have ever tried required additional tweaking to 
> 1) install netdrivers
> 2) install X
> 3) configure X

Debian has put a lot less into automating the setup of X
than many distros...this is not a bad thing, it just means
you need a little bit more experience going in.  On the
other hand, you also get a setup a bit better tuned to your
system than you do with many Distros.  It is, though, all
done as part of the standard install process if you install
X.  Net drivers are simply a matter of selecting your
network card from the list at install time.  Again, no
auto-detection used to guess at things, nor loading too
many/wrong drivers which I have seen lead to problems in
other distributions.

> apt-get/dselect is a rather arcane way of installing stuff. I prefer rpm's or 
> gentoo's portage system.

apt-get definately does not offer the slick interface of
some of the GUI rpm systems I have seen (not used portage),
but then that isn't its purpose, and apt-get itself isn't
why we like the package management system. (though I would
say apt-get's command-line interface is a lot more intuative
than rpm's).

What is nice about the debian method is that unless you
try *really* hard, you cannot install get into dependancy
nightmares.  You install a package, and apt-get forces
everything to work properly.  If there are conflicts, you
will be prompted to either remove the conflicting packages
or cancel the installation.  On Red-Hat, there is no
guarantee of this, merely tools that help avoid
problems...when I was using RedHat, I once managed to make
my system completely unusable because of the lack of
dependancy checking, and I know other people still using
RedHat that have run into similar problems recently.

> I have found most debian users are hype kings, much like
> slackware users were.

Again, I can but agree...but then, RedHat, Mandrake, SuSe,
Gentoo, etc., users are hype kings as well.  There isn't a
single distribution that *doesn't* have its fair share of
hype kings, just the two major distributions are currently
Debian and RedHat...and as Debian is the lesser-used of the
two, there are more people to point out its flaws and fewer
people to give (valid) support for its benefits than the
other way around.

--David