| Tobias DiPasquale on 18 Aug 2004 00:50:03 -0000 |
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On Aug 17, 2004, at 7:50 PM, W. Chris Shank wrote: I'm actually a fairly recent convert to debian and am really liking it. Yeah, APT is enamoring when you first get to know it, that's for sure ;-) This is my first attempt at a pure debian desktop - but we have been really satisfied with it for our servers. IMO, Debian is a server-only distro. I suffered under a Debian (stable!) desktop for about a year, and that was the most hacked-up, non-standard desktop you ever saw because I couldn't get a package from the mirror that was more recent than 1995. After a while, I sat back and wondered "what the hell am I doing running 10-year old software on a desktop???" That kind of stability is great for a server, but anethma for a desktop. Whereas with debian, if we want our standard server to have something that's deviated from the main deb branch - we create our own custom package. That way - if/when the main branch has it we can use that package instead. I find that to be sometimes the case, and sometimes not. I've had to make not a few custom packages for software the Debian doesn't have and when they do come out with a package finally, it tends to not look anything like the package that you made. Sometimes its a smooth upgrade, but most of the time I stick with my own package. It's been very easy. I never had this type of luck with RedHat or SuSE - unless I wanted to stick strictly to what the vendor gave me. To be fair, that is exactly what those distros are designed for: using the stock distro without very much modification for many, many desktops and servers by medium to large organizations with a staff that are generally not Linux gurus. dpkg is simpler than RPM, once you get the hang of it. However, Gentoo ebuilds are a 20-30 line build solution that, if your software doesn't change that much between versions, practically ensures smooth updates for new releases (if you're familiar with BSD ports, you know the idea behind Gentoo's Portage system). Plus, you don't really need to make as many ebuilds, due to the good availability of software on Gentoo. As well, they don't generally manage configuration files, which means that once you set them up how you like them, they won't get blown away during an upgrade because some developer forgot to put them in debian/conffiles (WARNING: sometimes APT will overwrite your config files even if they DO appear in debian/conffiles; APT is smart like tractor; you've been warned). Not to start a flame war or anything. Redhat has it's place. Just not on I've had a lot of experience with Debian and also with Gentoo and as far as package availability goes, Gentoo kicks Debian's ass up and down the street. More recent versions are available much more quickly than Debian will ever have. The trick with Gentoo is making sure you hold packages _back_ from newer, unstable versions. This is opposite of Debian: having to make custom packages for versions or software that Debian has and is too old, or just plain doesn't have (availability of non-GPL software under Debian is not the greatest). Gentoo is very similar to and reminiscent of *BSD but more performant and recent, whereas I liken Debian to an '76 Buick: old, underperforming, steers real slow but has a fanatical following. At the end of the day, its up to you, but I'd grab some crap box and install Gentoo on it just to check it out and see if you see something that you like. It doesn't take long for the afterglow of Debian to wear off. ;-) BTW: Toby, I hope you did well on that squelcher thing. I heard about it Scoop: we were recently acquired by Symantec for $28 million less than 6 months after becoming TurnTide. Plus, I still have the same job as before (Senior Software Engineer), which is good, considering the fact that my wife is about to have our first child any day now. Yeah, I'd say we did pretty damn well ;-) Thanks! -- Tobias DiPasquale ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
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