<quote who="Richard Blackburn">
> I thought that might get your attention.
Have a look at 'alien' sometime... RPMs for Debian (and vice versa, and
others). RPM is also packaged in the official Debian repositories.
> Could someone briefly explain WITHOUT prejudice what is Debian as
> opposed to what is not Debian? Please be objective.
Okay, I'll bite. ;)
Debian is the OS you can download from www.debian.org, or one of its
mirrors. The project provides well integrated software that can be used on
top of the Linux, HURD, and soon, the BSD kernels.
But that's all semantics - how can you say what is SuSE and what is not?
After all, they're all the same OS (Linux), and most of them distribute
similar selections of Free Software.
It's really the way it's done that makes the difference. :)
The non-objective side of it is this: I reckon Debian is a very cool way of
building an OS around Free Software. Nothing religious, I just like it a
lot. :)
> Further what difference would that mean if I wanted to load an
> application, say, Real Player 8 for *nix?
Oh, that's easy: apt-get install realplayer
Really, I'm not kidding! Okay, realplayer is only distributed as an RPM by
Real. Plus, the way they lay out the files and set it up doesn't really fit
into Debian's design; alien doesn't really help out a lot.
When you install realplayer in Debian, debconf (the standard package
configuration system - ncurses clicky stuff) prompts you to download the
RPM, and it then extracts and installs realplayer the 'Debian Way'. [1]
Not all packages do this - you just happened to choose a good one to
demonstrate how the Debian project routes around problems. ;)
- Jeff
[1] Some people get the impression that this strange thing sometimes called
the 'Debian Way' is a wild decree that things must be in their 'proper
place' and any exceptions will be flamed publically.
Okay, so it sometimes is that, ;) but it's usually a lot more. How do you
make sure that thousands of pieces of software work together well? You have
to standardise, and have good ways of interacting with it. I've mentioned
the 'rule of least surprise' before; Debian pulls this off remarkably well.
I now say about Debian what I used to say about Linux: It's not quite ready
for everyone (yet), but it's bloody good stuff already.
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