[TriLUG] Debian any good?

[crimsun at fungus.sh.nu]

On Sun, Feb 01, 2004 at 09:45:08AM -0500, Sinner from the Prairy wrote:
> The installation is nothing like you are used to.  You will install the 
> modules as you will be the one detecting the hardware... opening the 
> case of your machine. The administration is easy: command-line tools 
> (something like "pkg-reconfig postfix" IIRC) and a good use of $EDITOR. 
> If you know what you are doing, this should not be a problem at all.

1) discover is in the Sarge installer. While you can always drill down
and choose the expert-level installation option, you don't have to muck
through menus anymore if you don't absolutely wish to. Of course it's
better to know your hardware, but it's becoming moot. With Woody, yes,
you're still going to muck with menus.
2) There's a debconf interface. You don't have to use $EDITOR unless you
wish to; you can use a ncurses or even a Gtk interface if you wish. This
is set by the debconf ui preference which of course you're asked at the
end of the installation.

> For a desktop usage... let's face it. Yes, it can do it. But you willl 
> be disapointed. Knoppix is not Debian. Knoppix is Debian + "hardware 
> detection like RedHat/Mandrake/SuSE" + desktop focused + the 
> latest&greatest versions of available software.

How would one be disappointed? Sure, it's not as simple or as straight-
forward for some hardware configurations. I walked four people through
Debian installs with various graphics cards last night on irc, and all
had GDM and the desktop environment of their choice running within two
attempts.

I've come and gone through many, many different desktop environments
and window managers in the many years I've worked with Linux and
XFree86. The Debian menu system, which I understand has been adopted by
several other prominent distributions, is a convenient method of
accessing one's installed programs via broad (arguably in need of
polish) categories. [In fact, it's so nice that it gets in the way of
certain functionality; for instance, I'm using ROX-Filer, and the entire
point of ROX-Filer collides with the Debian menu system.] Most of the
major desktop environments and window managers are a simple "apt-get
install" away. Granted, Debian does _not_ come with a pretty face by
default; one will assuredly spend some time configuring fonts and anti-
aliasing and things of that nature. I know. I finally honed it down by
studying a Red Hat 9 configuration.

Every person has a unique experience with his desktop or server install.
Undoubtedly Red Hat, Mandrake, and SUSE present fine interfaces. It's
really just a sign of my growing old and more set in my ways: We like
using what we know best.

> Debian comes in 3 "flavours" (see http://www.debian.org/releases/ )
> 
> - - stable. 
> A rock solid, tested once and again set of pakages. Beware that the 
> available packages might be really "ancient" and you will find some of 
> your prefeared tools lacking functionality. You are lucky that the 
> laetst stable was released this last November. It takes ~ 2 years to 
> release a new "stable". 

The stable philosophy does not agree with "latest and greatest." Stable
is best-suited for system administrators who can't be bothered digging
through lists to see what each revision of a package changes. It Just
Works. Why muck with something that's known-working? On the other hand,
I know quite a few judicious administrators who run "unstable" on their
servers because they _can_ be bothered to study changelogs and diffs.
These are the guys being credited in security advisories.

If one truly wishes to install "latest and greatest" on Woody, there are
many unofficial backport sources.

> - - testing
> This version has newer packages. Desktop users use (at least) "testing".  
> It's stable enough to be used as a desktop. I understand that it's also 
> used as a server, when "stable" doesn't have the needed software 
> versions. Knoppix uses a mix of "tesing" and "unstable" packages. This 
> version is in constant change, and sometimes is pretty broken.

The note about spending time with changelogs and diffs from directly
above (in the stable section) applies. Testing is not recommended
generally for servers because it has no security updates (same for
unstable). Of course there are sharp guys running testing on their
servers, and they know what they're up against wrt security updates.

"Constant" change is somewhat misleading. Generally one might think of
package flux as an "every ten days to two weeks" (depending on the hold
time in unstable) thing for testing.

> - - unstable
> Active development here. The very latest stuff shows up here. Of course, 
> it is "broken" , although some parts are more stable than others.

It's interesting to note that over seven years, I've experienced exactly
three major disruptions in unstable that I would term "broken." Unstable
has been extremely stable (as things should be!) in terms of package
use.

> Some of my Debian friends, after having to spend way too much time 
> getting a debian desktop in place, got sick of it and now on their 
> desktops they are using Mandrake[*]. And those friends used to be the 

Yes. This is generally the biggest complaint about any desktop config
on Debian.

> [*] In fact, some are writting articles on "howto change from Debian to 
> Mandrake in the desktop", to dispell the myth that "Mandrake is Windows 
> in disguise, only for woosies". See articles about it on Libertonia 
> http://libertonia.escomposlinux.org (in Spanish)

Mandrake is certainly not a desktop for wussies. It's well-polished, and
it's a breeze to install, like Red Hat 9 or Fedora Core 1.

> In the end, Linux is Linux is Linux is Linux is Linux.

I couldn't agree more.

-- 
Daniel T. Chen          crimsun at fungus.sh.nu
GPG key:   www.sh.nu/~crimsun/pubkey.gpg.asc
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