On Thu, Jun 05, 2008 at 01:34:24PM +0100, A J Stiles wrote: > For me, Debian is all about purity (only Free software is installed by > default) but also about not getting in the way of the user. Debian doesn't > insist for you to use some fancy graphical configuration tools; you can just > edit configuration files by hand without fear of breaking anything or having > them overwritten by some magical master configurator. And you can choose > whether you want to install pre-compiled packages or compile from Source. > Almost every piece of Free software ever written is available in the > repositories anyway, ready to use; but if you happen to have some special > requirement, you can easily build your own hacked-up version (for instance, > I have a specially-modified copy of Gramofile -- a vinyl LP ripping > program -- that is tied to the USB audio input). > > Debian isn't the easiest distribution in the world, or it certainly wasn't > when I started out on it. Try as I might, I couldn't quite get to grips with > it and so went over to Mandriva (or Mandrake, as it was called then). That > was fine for awhile, but I eventually outgrew it: their package repository > was limited and I ended up learning to compile things from Source Code. And > by the time you're doing that (and you have learned the hard way > about -devel packages, or -dev packages as Debian calls them) then it no > longer matters which distro you're running anymore. > > This, of course, was a long time before there was such a thing as Ubuntu. > For > the most part, Ubuntu *is* Debian, just customised. Bits have been sawn off > and bits have been welded on, but the engine and chassis are recognisably > Debian. Ubuntu is what I would recommend to anyone seeking to try Linux out; > just because I know that if it fouls up, it's familiar enough for me to be > able to fix it -- all the configs and logs are exactly where I have come to > expect them to be.
Debian stable releases seem to upgrade better to the next release than Ubuntu. I think Ubuntu should really put some more effort into making sure upgrades work flawlessly. I think fixed release dates is a huge mistake on the part of Ubuntu, but rather typical of anything with commercial backing. > The other distributions with a reputation for being "hard" (because they > involve understanding, if not how things work under the bonnet then that > there *is* a bonnet with moving parts under it, and sometimes doing things by > hand without the benefit of slick graphical "wizards" to allow you to select > one of a number of pre-set configurations; some people seem conditioned to > think that there is something intrinsically hard about reading text and > typing on a keyboard) are Gentoo and Slackware. I think many people don't realize that installing a system is hard. I think most computer users would have difficulty installing windows if their system hadn't come with it pre installed. > Slackware is very "old-skool" (though it has up-to-date packages), and > tends > to stay even further out of your way than Debian does. This extends to not > having a package management and dependency resolution system of its own. I > tried it, and it didn't really seem to offer anything that Debian didn't. > > Gentoo is famous for tweakability. Instead of pre-compiled packages, Gentoo > packages contain Source Code and automated build instructions; they are > compiled right on your machine to suit your machine, according to various > optimisation flags specified by you. Again, I tried it; and it also didn't > seem to offer anything special over Debian apart from the fact of there being > no more need for -dev packages. It was a good learning experience, though: > I'd seriously advise anyone who is thinking of creating their own GNU/Linux > distribution to do an install of Gentoo from Stage One, even if you don't > plan to base your distro from Gentoo. If they don't have -dev packages, that means every system is wasting space on header files that it probably doesn't need. I have never tried gentoo, since it is fundamentally the wrong way to do a system. I have built stuff from source before, and I really don't have any need to waste cpu cycles on doing what the package maintainer already did. > In all fairness to Slackware and Gentoo, I am quite sure that had I been > using > either of these first and dallied with Debian, I would have gone back to what > I knew. And if Ubuntu had been around when I lost patience with Debian, then > that's what I would have tried next. If I'd tried Ubuntu sooner, I'm not > even sure I'd ever have reverted to Debian; except maybe for GUI-free > servers. I started with SLS, went to slackware, then redhat, and finally Debian. At no point did I ever want to go back, since each time was a vast improvement. > BTW. If you want to see real elitism, try hanging around with a bunch of > SuSE > users -- they are all boss-eyed from looking down their noses at everyone > else! ;) I installed SuSE once. That didn't last long (the installer alone pissed me off). -- Len Sorensen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
