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Re: SlakWare or RedHat?



"Vadik V. Vygonets" <vadik@arbornet.org> wrote:
|On Tue, 8 Oct 1996, Ira Abramov wrote:
|
|> - I have ZILCH experiance with Debian, but I admit I have yet to meet a
|> Debian user that doesn't like it.
|
|Excuse me, but what's zilch? (dumb question, but I really don't know:)

"Zilch", as far as I know, means "zero" (or "nil" for you lisp folks :)
in German.  Marc - any comments?

|
|> - RedHat DO have fast and efficient updates, organized in a separate
|> "updates" directory for easy mirroring, without confusing you by putting
|> them all in the main install directory until the next version, correct me
|> if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure it is the same with Debian.
|
|Debian has "unstable" directory for this purpose.

I think you are a little confused about the versioning scheme of
Debian.  I'm not blaming you, I found it a little confusing too at
first (but I think I have an excuse - the Debian maintainers
themselves were formulating the scheme in front of my mirroring
scripts...:).

As it is now, Debian has names for each *version* (as opposed to
*revision*, which many people seem to confuse).  The current "stable"
version is "buzz", this is Debian 1.1.  The current
"unstable"/"development" version is "rex", I don't think it was
assigned a version number.  "buzz", being "stable", only changes in
order to fix problems found in its files as they were frozen when it
was released.  The "buzz" directory is totally frozen and all changes
are made in "link farms" which alternatively point to it and to
"buzz-updates".  The "current fixed" version is allways under
"stable".  The *revision* number as of today is 11 (i.e. Debian 1.1.11
is the latest stable version).

As for upgrading things - I now have a mix of "buzz" and "rex"
packages, I don't know actually what came from where.  But it works
wonderfully.

One thing which is nice to play with is the "ftp access method" of
dselect.  dselect(1) in general is a little buggy (but getting better
with time).  I don't have any relevant experience with current RedHat
distributions, but it sounds like Debian has something to learn from
them about management tools.

|
|> - most of RedHat's installation IS GPLed, the tools are freely available
|> and reusable, and you can have it for free, the official version costs
|> more but also contains valueable commercial products(!).
|
|Can you get the sources of the packages you get?  (not the .tar.gz of the
|program, but the source of .rpm).  Well, you can get a source of .deb
|files in "[un]stable/sources".  BTW, stable and unstalbe are symbolic
|links to another directory, for example, "stable" now is a link to "rex",
|it seems.

See above for corrections.  Dunno if you can get sources to RPM's but
then, why should you?

|
|> - this financial support helps RedHat standardize Linux on Sparc and Alpha
|
|Debian does the same thing.

I don't see what's the connection between paying RedHat and support for
those platforms?

About paying to RedHat:

1. It probably might mean that I would be able to point to a "supported
   Linux platform" when I suggest it for projects with "big guys" (e.g.
   Efrat might take it).

2. If you want to support Linux in general then you can probably pay
   some Linux fund or directly to Linus himself.
|
|> - RedHat's support is fast and efficient, competing succesfully with
|> Email/list/newsgroup volunteer support.
|
|Well, yes.
|
|Believe me, I don't wanna start Yet Another Holy War(tm), because I don't
|think that holy wars between Linux distributions is exactly what we need
|now :)

And, maybe like most wars in history, it would be a very stupid war.
Each one should pick what he likes and fits him.  Not that I'm
planning to convert today from Debian to RedHat, I like Debian very
much, but from reading the announcement I would try it out if I had a
choice.

And one last thing - Me and Yigal might be able to print a CD-ROM of
anything reasonable, in case anyone is interested (for the price of
the media).

|Linux hackers are funny people: They count the time in patchlevels.

Nice sig.

Cheers,

--Amos

--Amos Shapira                    | "Of course Australia was marked for
133 Shlomo Ben-Yosef st.          |  glory, for its people had been chosen
Jerusalem 93 805                  |  by the finest judges in England."
ISRAEL             amos@dsi.co.il |                     -- Anonymous


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