On Wednesday 24 March 2004 2:26 am, Devon Holcombe wrote: > I currently use Slackware and never have a problem with it, in fact that's > pretty much the only Linux distribution I've ever used. I am, however, for > various reasons considering switching distributions. The only distro I am > actually giving any serious consideration to at this time is Debian.
Debian is extremely nice from the standpoint of keeping the system updated and current. You can even set up a little cron job to automatically download and install updates. The main downside is security updates. Stable is getting pretty old and moldy. Which only matters if you need the functionality in newer package versions. Security fixes for Stable packages get top priority. Another thing some folks like about Debian is how Free and non-Free packages reside in separate repositories. So anyone who doesn't want to use non-Free software can easily avoid it. If you want current versions of your software, Testing and Unstable are good. 'Unstable' is a misleading name, Unstable packages are fine n dandy. But Testing, at the moment, does not get security updates, and Unstable gets them only when individual package maintainers feel like it. I'm perfectly comfortable running Testing/Unstable on workstations and desktops, and on servers that are not running Internet services. On a web or mailserver that is exposed to the Internet- well, I wouldn't do it, but if you're sharp on hardening and securing your systems, it would be OK. Yes, you can install apps from sources, and apply patches manually. That rather defeats the purpose of using Debian, I think, because you lose the wonderful benefits of apt-get. It's the dependency-resolving, and stringent package quality control makes Debian such a pleasure to use, in my estimable opinion. Have you considered Gentoo? That may be closer to what you want. It's lean n mean like Slackware, and gives you great control over what goes on your system. They are fast with security updates, and their package management and dependency-resolving are almost as good as Debian's. And their documentation is first-rate, I think the best of any distribution. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Carla Schroder this message brought to you by Libranet 2.8 and Kmail ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ _______________________________________________ PDXLUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://pdxlug.org/mailman/listinfo/pdxlug
