Dan Treacy wrote:
> Second is related to this I'm still tossing up between Mandrake and Debian..
> I've used RH/Mandrake pretty much since I've started using Linux (Although
> my first experience was actually with Slackware) but after seeing alot of
> the comments both here and elsewhere I'm pretty much convinced to give
> Debian a go.
This is the stuff of religous wars...
> Two questions mainly . Just quickly are there any main/radical
> difference that one should be aware of, traps for the unwary coming from the
> other distros etc..
Same things that others are saying: package management and
configuration. For the most part, RedHat's UI is nicer looking, but what
Debian has under the hood is superb. It is not perfect, but gets it
wrong so rarely as to not matter. The only obvious trap is that if you
wish to install a package, you don't download it yourself. Instead just
type 'apt-get install packagename' and let Debian the rest. If you do go
ahead and download the .deb archive, you'll find yourself needing to get
more intimate with the package management system than you might wish.
> And the second is about 2.1/2.2 what's the general
> consensus on which to use at present. My intial impression was 2.2 but I
> imagine some of the Debian gurus out there might be able to shed a little
> more light.
I'm too cowardly to run unstable (woody). Instead, I run frozen (potato,
2.2beta3 at present). My only problem was an apparent kernel bug that
prevented the installer from getting at the CD-ROM. Ughh. Running stable
(slink, 2.1 at present) is likely to be largely error-free, but it is so
old that lots of packages are missing and those that are there are
typically out of date (expect for security fixes, of course).
I'd suggest running potato or woody, as you see fit.
- Raz
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