[TriLUG] Debian vs Mandrake vs Redhat vs . . .

[Jeremy Portzer]

On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 00:48, Ben Pitzer wrote:
> I know that we have alot of RH and
> Mandrake users on here who vouch for the efficacy of apt for RPM, but I'm
> not quite as sold on the idea as most folks.  First, you never know who is
> packaging an RPM from one version to the next. 

Huh?  Not sure what that means... with apt for RPM you are normally
downloading the official GPG-signed packages from Red Hat.  You know
exactly who is packaging them!

You can also use the "FreshRPMs" repository if you want some of the
multimedia stuff there but all that is packaged by one specific person,
not like Debian where it's all different people. ;-)

> With Debian, the same
> package maintainer is responsible for that package at all times, and in many
> cases is either part of the development team for that software, or else
> collaborates with the developers to fix bugs and generally keep things
> stable and happy.  If the Debian powers-that-be aren't happy with a specific
> packages stability, it doesn't make it into the stable distribution, thus
> ensuring the stability of that version of Debian.  With no guarantees on who
> is building and uploading the packages to an RPM apt source, I'm much less
> sold on the idea.  I just don't believe that there is enough security or
> stability guaranteed there. 

Obviously you have a big misconception about what's going on with apt
for RPM.  I would NEVER use it on my servers if it weren't checking the
GPG signatures and assuring that the packages were the official ones
from Red Hat Inc.

> Plus, the 'testing' distro of Debian (currently
> codenamed Sarge) is as stable as any RH *.1 or *.2 release that I've ever
> played with.  I'm not trying to bash RH or Mandrake, but I've found that the
> majority of folks who use Debian cite the package management as the best and
> most practical reason for their doing so.  Of course, there is Debian's
> dedication to free software as well, but I leave individuals to determine
> for themselves if ideology is a good enough reason for them to choose a
> distro.  For some it is, and they have my utmost respect for their views.
> Those folks are the ones who've helped build Debian from the ground up.

Then you should really be calling it Debian GNU/Linux, right?  *grin*
 
> 
> All in all, for a server, I'll probably always recommend Debian.  It's as
> easy to maintain headless as it is through KDE or Gnome, practically, and
> the installer these days isn't nearly as bad as folks make it out to be.  In
> fact, it's fairly simple, and guides you through step-by-step in fairly
> familiar terms.  You still need to know a little bit about your hardware, as
> it doesn't have an automatic hardware detection utility like RH, Mandrake or
> SuSE, but so long as you know what kernel modules you need for your
> hardware, you'll get along just fine.

But how is a new user gonna have any clue what kernel modules your
hardware uses?  :-)
It will be nice to see an updated installer in Debian.

--Jeremy