This one time, at band camp, Daniel Bush wrote: > I don't always like the way debian (and perhaps by extension ubuntu) modify > the conf files and arrange things for various software - I don't want to > have to figure out the debian-way on top of figuring out the software itself
Wait a second, you'd rather learn where every piece of software you install puts its config files rather than the single place you'll find all config files with any Debian package? This, for me, is the best thing about Debian! Configuration is in /etc/. Not /use/opt/lib/conf/ or wherever the weirdo who wrote the software thinks config files should go since he started using Unix on one of the proprietary "open" systems in the seventies and that was the place it put them. If config isn't in /etc/, it's a bug. > The other thing is that debian and its non-commercial nature seems like an > interesting phenomenon in itself. It feels big, comprehensive and reliable > (that ssh thing last year notwithstanding :) ) but it's not backed by any > big company or an overt commercial interest. Seems to me that there is > definitely something valuable there in the way it brings together a lot of > the best free/open-source software into a unified system that can be shown > off to the world. The amazing thing is that the project has stuck to its guns throughout, and that's paying off. Nobody would consider forking their own distro from another source now unless they were deeply invested in another distro already. > [1] it also helps that there are isp's like iinet who provide free mirrors > for debian/ubuntu/* repositories which you can use if you are customer One of my colleagues was complaining this week that a Vista service pack is something like a gigabyte (and her ISP doesn't have free mirrors) of download in one hit. Ouch. -- Rev Simon Rumble <si...@rumble.net> www.rumble.net The Tourist Engineer Just because you're on holiday, doesn't mean you're not a geek. http://engineer.openguides.org/ "When bankers get together for dinner they discuss art, when artists get together for dinner they discuss money." - Oscar Wilde -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
