Hello Harry, I've been a long-time user of Debian, in fact, it's the only distribution I've really used, so while I'm not qualified to comment on other distros I think I've learned some of the pros & cons of using Debian.
I would say that Debian's greatest plus feature is the stability and consistency of it's stable releases, and I would say that it's greatest negative feature is a consequence of it's greatest plus feature; it will always be using dated, or older versions of software. This is fine if the older versions of software that end up in the Debian stable distros are sufficient for your needs or you are developing your own software and don't need or wish to use 'bleeding-edge' versions of development libraries and packages etc. to make your software work. For something like FlightGear however, which largely requires the latest versions of quite a few other packages, it can be a problem. For example, if you wish to keep up to date with FG development and work with the cvs version of FG you won't be able to use the version of OSG in etch but will have to get a later version from the OSG project and install it yourself, which may in turn require later versions of other packages too. Now this may be ok if you don't use any other Debian packages that depend upon OSG but if you do you'll then hit dependency problems. There are ways around this but they'll require some degree, and sometimes a lot, of extra work and housekeeping to keep everything working. Incidentally, regarding OSG, I think the version that will end up in Lenny, which will soon become the next stable release (perhaps even this year - lol), will be OSG 2.4.0, which will still be too old for the current release version of FG. It also looks like the Debian version of FG that will be released with Lenny is 1.0.0. You could try using Debian's unstable distro but you need to be aware that it's a constantly moving target where dependencies are frequently broken. You really need a testing system if you're going to run unstable, to test updates before you roll them out to the machines you depend upon to work. You also really need to maintain your own partial mirror too, if you want to keep several systems in step because it's likely that there will have been further updates between the time you finish testing one set of updates and then start rolling them out to your other machines. Debian's testing distro varies a lot depending on the current point in the Debian release cycle. Around now, where Lenny has largely been frozen and where the current focus is on bug-squashing and final testing, it is very stable, but once it's actually been promoted and released as the new stable, testing will become very unstable and sometimes even less stable than unstable (speaking from experience) until it too is frozen. So perhaps for something like FG, Ubuntu might be a better bet, as it's based more on unstable than stable, with new versions of software being brought forward much more quickly than with Debian. LeeE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
