So, the best known and highly used distribution, RedHat, will also suffer the same problem as per your conclusions. I think the following chart will be better to clarify:
Debian RedHat Version Stable/woody RHEL Stable testing/sarge Fedora Legacy testing unstable/sid Fedora unstable
actually you are wrong, at least with that comparison.
while one version of redhat (say rh 8 / rh 9 back then, or RHEL / Fedora now) will stick forever with the same software version with backported patches, you will find that they do release newer stable (and yes, rh does appear to be stable these days) versions at a rather faster rate than debian does.
I don't think daemons to be run from inetd to be a habit, rather that's an option that's provided. It's upto you wether you want to run it from inetd or standalone.
It is an option that can only be described as "stupid".
Now coming to the split of config files. Just because you like a single file handling configuration system doesn't mean that Debian is stupid. Splitting of config files is for modularity. And debconf is an excellent piece of output from the Debian project. Instead of diving into hundred lines of configuration options, it provides us a simple `dpkg-reconfigure packagename` interface for atleast a barebone configuration. I think it's an add-on excellent feature, not a drawback or a "bad habit".
OK, fine, you can think whatever you like, it is a free country.
come on! In the whole mail you've tried making out deficiencies out of the distribution and at the end you try summing it up with us. There's nothing close minded. We back up Debian / GNU just as you might do for your favourite distro. And yes, Debian is a successfull and ideal example of the GNU philosophy.
Debian is a rather good distribution in its own way - it works as advertised. I don't like the way it works, is about all, and I think they have done a few things that may work, but ensure that unless you are a longtime debian user you can't just step right up and admin it (assuming general unix familiarity here of course).
Someone admining a slackware machine, or a freebsd machine, or even a redhat machine, will more or less know what to look for, what filenames to edit, etc. Not so in debian.
The end result is that I've seen so many users who stick to completely outdated versions of a package (exim 3.35 for example), and say "no I can't upgrade, there is no debian stable package for exim 4" <- sure there is, andreas metzler now has a backport of exim 4 for debian stable... but this "there is no debian package!! mommy I am scared of upgrading by doing a ./configure, make, make install" attitude seems surprisingly common among a whole lot of debian users that I've seen.
Some Debian users who don't know too much but still keep spreading ill informed FUD about other distros, or about people who disagree with their interpretation of the gnu philosophy, on the other hand ... that's a completely different story.
srs
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