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Re: Distributions {Re: SuSE 6.0}
On Wed, February 3 1999, "Stanislav Malyshev a.k.a Frodo" <frodo@sharat.co.il>
wrote:
|> between Red Hat and Debian: Debian to Red Hat is about the same thing
|> that Linux is to Windows. The former is considered harder to install
|[...]
|> companies do; people like the community aspect of it as opposed to the
|> mass market scent of the other; it's considered technically superior
|> by most people who had tried both.
|
|What I just can't understand - how one distribution can be technically
|superior on other. The only thing that's really different is packaging
You haven't had a chance to administer IRIX 5 and SunOS 4 on the same
network lately, have you? :)
The wealth of packages, how well they work with each other, how
up-to-date they are with the "upstream" version, system management
procedures, tools and system files. How well can a user find his way
through the packages/files/programs. All these can make a difference.
Apart from Debian, I have only minor experience with Suse (they keep
sending me copies because about ten years ago I patched GNU m4, go
figure....). Suse have some nice ideas (Yast is nice, and I wish
Debian copied their idea of one shell script which sets variables for
the rest of the system), but I found it difficult to find my way
through their package lists, and 5.2 (the version I bothered to open
and install) is still based on libc5.
As for Debian - I installed it once when it was about version 0.99r6
(or somesuch) and never had to re-install it since (only when my disk
crashed because of power failure or when I moved to another machine),
it's not that I stayed with that old version, but I did "live update"
of the working system without having to start from scratch (0.99 to
1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2.0 and now 2.1, including a switch from libc5 to
libc6). I think this is one of their strongest points. Inter-Package
dependencies are also a very strong point - it's hard to break a
package by installing/removing it or another package - dpkg won't let
you do it. This is in sharp contrast to what I keep seeing questions
from RH users asking which version of which RPM should they install in
which order, you'll NEVER hear such a question coming from a Debian
user unless he's using an unstable version of Debian.
As for Alien - I only tried it once (it originated in Debian) and it
didn't work well (converted an RPM to DEB). Maybe it's better today
but it doesn't mean that there is no difference between the various
distributions just because this tool exists.
|I understand that if somebody likes something, (s)he wants to prove it's
|the best. This is very respectful. But I do not understand those zealous
|attitudes. If you want to compare - give facts. Otherwise, you just
What's zealous about saying that Debian is better than Redhat? It's
an opinion.
|spreading FUD, bad rumours and nothing more. I do not see any use in this,
|really.
FUD????!!!! Show me one word of FUD in this thread!
|name bad, name caveats. Facts. Just taking labels and putting them here
|and there won't help anyone. Really.
Ditto for you.
--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@gezernet.co.il | -- Anonymous