Pat Regan on 19 Jul 2005 00:18:35 -0000


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Re: [PLUG] Re: why Gentoo


Cosmin Nicolaescu wrote:
> well, i'm not sure about debian, but with mandrake a patch release
> takes longer to get in their package manager than portage.
> 

Debian security updates are normally quite fast.

> well, check what the current versions for some major apps are 
> (KDE,X.org,apache), check what the portage stable is, and then check
> what debian has and I think you'll notice the difference.

apt is telling me that Debian unstable has X.org 6.8.2 which is current,
and apache 1.3.31 (current is 1.3.33, there are likely patches beyond
1.3.31 in that package).  I am too lazy to check KDE :).

> And the fact that Debian packages are really old is a know fact, and
> a complain from most Debian users. I agree that STABLE is a very
> solid, since it's been tested for a long time, but (and I'm not sure
> about Sid on this one) having the stable kernel be 2.2 seems a bit
> too extreme to me..
> 

Woody (old stable) came with a 2.2 kernel.  Woody became stable back
around 2000, and stable means that there will be no major version
changes.  I am going to show my ignorance of Sarge (new stable) by not
knowing which kernel it ships with.  Like a lot of people, the kernel is
usually one of the first things I replace.

I think 5-6 years is way too long between stable releases.  Hopefull
since they dropped some binary platforms they will be able to run a
faster release cycle.  Even if they can't, this problem is being
answered very well by the folks at Ubuntu.  Ubuntu seems to be
everything I like about Debian, since it starts from a frozen Sid, but
with more up to date desktop packages.

> I'm not advocating a switch from Debian. I think Debian is the best
> binary distro, and if you have a slow machine, without the
> possibility of using a more powerful machine for compiles, Debian is
> great. I just got spoiled with source installs and customizations :)

It is quite easy to build Debian (and RPM) packages from source, I just
don't feel the need very often.  About a half dozen out of the 1700+
packages installed on my workstation were built by hand.

I have enough processor here at home to build all the packages I need
to, I just choose not to.  I am very glad we both have the choice.  Now
if somebody put together a package system based on patches, I would be
all for it.  I would even settle for binary diffs.

Pat

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