At 06:07 PM 2/27/2003 -0500, Haines Brown wrote: [...]
> Hardware *detection* is a different issue, and on that score, Debian > fares poorly ... unless you use very mainstream stuff, you have to > tell Debian a lot about your hardware.
By "mainstream," you do mean machines (Dell, Gateway, etc.) or components (Maxtor, 3M, etc.)? My impression is that the mass assembled machines sometimes use odd components, and so adapting to the machine or the component can have quite different results.
I meant components. (Except for an old E-Machine I'm in the process of converting from Win98, I build all my own Linux systems, so I have absolutely zero experience installing Linux on Gateway or Dell boxes.)
NICs are a good example (and the one I keep colliding with). The stock Debian install kernel contains built-in drivers for tulip, eepro100, and maybe one or two others. If you use anything less ordinary, you need to add the right module (and to know which one is right).
I'm told that RH is much better at hardware detection ... but I'm also told that the RH installer is somewhat Windows-like, in that if it is stumped, there is no ready way for you to move ahead by identifying unrecognized hardware for it. But I don't know any of that from my own experience, so it could easily be a misunderstanding on my part.
[...]
I used to worry about customizing package selection, but handicaped by not really being sure what they are. My salvation (if one call it that) is the low price of giant hard disks these days, and so I can just load everything (HOWTOs in Japanese, etc.). Is debian informative about what the various packages are?
Probably about as informative as RPMs are. That is to say, good but not great. Package names usually make sense, and searchig the package cache usually finds what you want. But sometimes your search terms are too vague to work ... you recall recently a question here about "rec", for example. Trying to search the package archive for "rec" matched 100+ packages ... a hopeless screening task. The real lack I find is my inability to query the database about what package contains a particular file ... there is a way to do this if the package is installed on the host, but not if you want the app and need to find out which package contains it. (In this respect, I was spoiled by Slackware, which always included a complete list, easily grep'able, of the complete contents of of every package.)
[...]
> You might ask yourself to what extent your problems with RH come > from trying to use the free version of a distro intended to make > money
Do you mean a compromise of the distribution's integrety in order to capture greater market share? If so, I suspect I may be a victim of that with RedHat 8.0.
I wouldn't use the word "integrity" here; it's too easily subject to the sort of misinterpretation that starts flame wars.
One can run a profit-making business and still have integrity, and I've no real doubt that Red Hat is scrupulous about meeting its obligations under GPL and other Open Source/free software licenses. But at the same time, those obligations do not require RH to run a high-performance package-updating service for non-paying users (for example). And RH might include non-GPL applications in the paid versions. I wouldn't be outraged by such behaviors, especially by a struggling business.
I don't know if they do things like that, not being a Red Hat user. But if I used Red Hat, I would be sure to understand the limitations of the free version and any restrictions associated with the paid version.
> I'd be *very* cautious about a "retreat" to RH 7.3, unless you can > satisfy yourself that it gets good security updates ... with a DSL > connection, you are vulnerable to attacks from the Internet pretty > much all the time, right?
As I mentioned, I think I was subject to attack under RH7.3. Other than that, however, the distributions 7.1 and 7.3 proved to be was very solid for me. However, besides security issues, backtracking is likely to break things unless I do a fresh re-install. But then why not simply go to gentoo, Debian or Slackware?
I'm not sure what you mean by "subject to" attack. As I would use the term, we're all subject to attack ... that is, all of us with persistent Internet connections (and even many of us with dial-up connections). I assume I am regularly attacked here (I don't even check any more, absent symptoms of a system compromise), but I believe that the paranoid firewall I have installed guards the gates effectively.
If you meant instead that your RH 7.3 included apps with known and uncorrected security holes ... well, that's what I meant by needing to pay attention to a distro's policy and practice regarding security updates. RH used to have a decent service for this, even for non-paying users, but I don't know it survived the IPO bust. And I don't know how long they continue to offer security updates for non-current versions. Debian Unstable (which I mostly use) is excellent about security updates, and I think Debian Stable is as good or better.
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