On Sun, 5 Jan 2003, Ira Abramov wrote:
> Quoting Shlomi Fish, from the post of Sat, 04 Jan:
> > 1. The latest version of RedHat, while possibly running a 2.2.x kernel.
> > 2. Mandrake 9.0 (which ships with a 2.2.x kernel).
>
> what's with the 2.2 kernel fixation?
>
That's something that Guy insists on, because the vanilla kernel 2.4.x is
or used to be quite buggy, and sometimes caused problems on some
computers. There are several servers out there running kernel 2.4.x, so we
can still give it a try.
> > S.u.s.e is not completely free, as some parts of the core distribution are
> > proprietary. Whether it should make any difference depends on how much one
> > is idealogical in regard to free software. I also find it unconventional
> > in comparison to RH/MDK, but that may have changed after it got the LSB
> > certificate.
>
> SuSE is a real PITA for me, since it very much forces you to use the
> annoying YAST for everything and steps over manual changes you make to
> conf files. I eat S&%T from it at work each day praying to the day we'll
> switch to RHL. for many reasons I'm dead against it, YAST and other
> parts not being free is a central issue, and the fact mirroring it and
> its security updates is an overkill (for lack of local interest), I say
> stay away...
>
I second that. I'm not a big favourite of S.u.s.e.
> > Gentoo is a source distribution with a very flexible packaging system.
> > I don't know how many people of the core iglu.org.il had any experience
> > working with it. Furthermore, we will need to compile everything from
> > source, and since it's a single-processor machine, we can render the
> > system unusable or temporarily exploitable for quite some time.
>
> very cute as an experimental home machine, but as 90% of the inhabitants
> of #gentoo will tell you, it is NOT for production systems. still too
> young and too fresh. package system is virtually non existant - in
> Gentoo they only check dependency of compilation, but new versions are
> installed over old without cleaning first... it's a real mess, and not
> guarantees any security timely updates. the concept of "closing a
> version" is non-existant, it's in flux as much as Debian's unstable.
>
> in short - NOT for a server, NOT for this server at all.
>
Ack. I only heard about Gentoo from heresay, so in case you are more
informant, I'll take your word for it. Did anybody here ever try Gentoo at
home?
> > Debian is a distribution with a very sophisticated package management
> > system (short only of Gentoo) and a huge trio of packages pool. It is
>
> Gentoo has very little in terms of a package system (read above) and
> definitly not better than Debian, I have no idea where you got that.
>
I think in Gentoo, you can easily specify Vim for example to compile
with or without Perl, Python or Ruby support. And generally customize
packages before compiling it. Let's just ignore this comment, and say
Debian has the most sophisticated package management system.
> > still not LSB-compliant as RedHat and Mandrake are. Moreover, a new
>
> who cares about LSB? either way, it's in the works.
>
I don't like the configuration files, directories etc. to lie in strange
places.
> > version of the distribution comes out every three years or so, while
>
> woody was 2 years in the making, not 3, and it was the longest it EVER
> took to get a version out. lots of people complained and things are
> taking on a different shape for Sarge (the next release). they want to
> have it out in a few months.
>
OK, good. It's one less thing not in favour of Debian.
> the fact Debian doesn't rush into a new release every so many months is
> a source of stability, not stagnation (see testing and unstable if you
> want). there is a relyability and robustness in the fact they only
> release when they have a technicly sound offering and not when the
> marketing department demands it.
>
I don't know about RedHat, but I used Mandrake 7.1, 7.2, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2 and
9.0, and they were all (except for maybe 7.1) quite stable and usable.
They were a few cute bugs here and there, but they in a usable state. Note
that of course, I am a power user who installs RPMs from source and
binaries, and sometimes have upgraded half the system this way. Normally,
it's not something someone is expected to do with it.
> > other distributions have semi-annual upgrades. Nonetheless, a Debian
> > system can be madeup to date by upgrading to the testing distribution
> > using apt.
>
> which can't be trusted for security updates.
>
> however, I'm glad to say it's so rediculesly easy to mix packages from
> two distributions, and have non-root stuff or non-server stuff run from
> a potentially less security-kept source that is more recent makes it all
> a joy to maintain and balance usability and security.
>
> I'm managing 4 servers today on Debian. one on unstable and three on
> stable, and frankly there is no other distribution I'd prefer. other
> than the easy and semi-automatic updates (I get notifications in Email and
> install them as soon as I get to an ssh-capable machine), it's the
> easiest distro for me to bring to a virtually zero-maintenence state.
> I encoraged the Fiasco group to switch to Debian too at some point in
> the past (and for a time I helped maintain it), and they'll tell you how
> Debian is indeed perfect for remote management of a secure server. it's
> my #1 choice.
>
> other reasons: excellent apache and apache-ssl packages, lots of little
> goodies like well-packaged qmail, webanalog and other packages we now
> install manually and many more.
>
OK.
I'm skipping the rest of this message as it was a purposely off-topic
rant. I did not claim Debian was not more technically superior that other
distributions. However, sometimes its non-exclusive "free" nature is
stressed too far, while there are other free distributions who are more
quiet about it and try to compete on Technical merits alone.
With all due respect, I think Mandrake is much more suitable to Newbies
than Debian is. After you are done getting the Mandrake ropes, you can
easily try Debian, or Gentoo or whatever distribution that is more rough
of the edges. But I saw two teenagers who were completely clue-less about
Linux, who decided to go with Debian, and as I noticed, were not fully
aware of the fine points of the free software idealogically. (or that
Mandrake was perfectly free as well)
Maybe I should write a post about it to Hackers-IL or Linux-IL and then
perhaps post it to Advogato or something.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
> > I think there's a lot of hype in Debian about how free
it is, and
it > > hurts the other free distributions, and even the proprietary Linux
> > distributors whose core system components are still open-source. It
>
> I don't care about who is more free or less free as long as their
> objectives are true, and that's giving the users the good product. RHL
> in the last few years started behaving like SuSE by hiding documentation
> to supposedly open source (Anaconda and friends), giving bad solutions
> to simple problems (up2date), and generally releasing badly tested *.0
> releases, to the point client software breaks or even data loss. I don't
> feel any obligation to use their product only because they are our best
> representation in the business arena these days. I just stopped trusting
> them at some point, and frankly, since I moved to apt, I'm happy I don't
> have to touch the low levels of rpm and dpkg unless something breaks
> REAL bad (which modern distros experiance rarley if at all)
>
> > does not help too much that Debian is the FSF endorsed distribution,
> > and that it has a distinction among "free" and "non-free" packages. If
> > you ask me, it's just free software bigotism.
>
> I chose Debian on technical merit and not just ideological ones. also
> the structure and community of the project attract me, and fits my
> political and social views on the world. last but not least is the
> social leading ideology behind GNU and Debian that is also importnat,
> but that's an added bonus, not the main reason for my voting Debian.
>
> This cannon has spoken :)
>
> --
> Even better than the real thing
> Ira Abramov
>
> http://ira.abramov.org/email/ This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13.
> Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Home Page: http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"
