[PLUG] It's free as in air and speech, not free as in beer.

Karl M. Hegbloom karlheg at hegbloom.net
Wed Aug 21 23:56:01 UTC 2002


Mark Morgan <lemming at attbi.com> writes:

> Jeme A Brelin wrote:
> > Quite frankly, when I see these Debian v. Red Hat discussions on this
> > list, I am stunned by how few people actually support Red Hat on technical
> > merits.  Usually the argument is simply reduced to "Diff'rent strokes for
> > diff'rent folks" and the Red Hat users urge the discussion dropped.  I've
> > yet to hear anyone argue that Red Hat is actually superior to Debian in
> > any way.  Instead, Debian supporters are branded and their arguments
> > dismissed as zealotry.
> 
> I haven't checked the latest Debian, but I would say Red Hat is easier
> to install and worked with all my hardware.  This may of changed with
> the woody release.

Do the cartoons and soft round cornered GUI provide the illusion that
it is easier to install?  Does the simple and elegant TUI of the
Debian "boot-floppies" install really make it seem that hard to
install?  Does the Red Hat installer speak 8 or 10 languages?

You don't NEED automatic device detection when you are installing
Debian from a CDROM.  You can install the base Debian system without
ever loading any driver modules.  After the base is installed and the
post install reboot, you simply type:

# apt-get install discover aptitude

... and at that point you will have hardware auto detection and a
wonderful TUI for software installation managment.

# apt-get install etherconf

... and you'll have network configuration, which you can change at any
time with a simple (once you learn of it):

# dpkg-reconfigure etherconf

>From that point on, you're on the net, and thus have all available
resources at your fingertips.  You'll find "task" packages for the X
Window System desktop in the "aptitude" user interface.  You may
choose Gnome or KDE, or build your own from a plethora of available
window managers.

> I've been playing around with different distributions on my Sony Vaio
> PCG-F580.

Is that an i386 arch CPU?  What is it?  Will it hibernate (suspend to
disk)?  If it's capable of it, I know how to make that work under
Linux.  All of the tools required are part of Debian, but not in the
default installer...  I have a static copy of "lphdisk", which is
required to format the hibernation partition.

> Ones I've gone through the entire install and used for at least a few
> days: SuSe 7.3, SuSe 8.0, Redhat 7.3, Mandrake 8.2, Gentoo 1.2

Would you like a Debian 3.0r0 (Woody) CDROM so you can try that also?
I can burn one for you if you like, no charge.

> Of these, only Redhat installed correctly.  Mainly due to my pcmcia
> NIC. SuSe needed tweaking of a conf file before it would work, but
> probably needed the second least amount of work to get running the way
> I wanted it too. (For some reason, Mandrake gave me trouble, but I
> don't recall what now.)

PCMCIA should work just fine in the Debian installer.  I've tested it
on my laptop, and had no trouble at all.  It Just Works.

> On the other hand, having the Redhat site busy for updates all the
> time means I haven't done any patches. (Though, I'm betting I'm
> missing some mirror...)

There are a lot of Debian mirrors, and I've never had any trouble
getting through on donated bandwidth.  They have a brand new security
build system set up, and security updates are out very soon after the
upstream patches become available.  You can subscribe to the
"debian-security-announce" mailing list to be promptly notified when
update packages become available on the mirror network.

> With SuSe, that was easy.  Their update tool works flawlessly for
> me. I happen to like SuSe a lot and will be keeping my main server
> running it for some time.

Does SuSe ship documentation or tools for creating your own update
server, for the case where you need to shadow their versions or to
provide packages of software they do not package?  How does their
update technology operate, I wonder...  and how does it compare to
"Apt", I wonder?  (the similar wondering about Red Hat's)

> I'm going to go back and load Gentoo again.  I found that
> distribution to be a fun delve into the nuts and bolts. Plus I do
> find running at the cutting edge to be a bit of a thrill.

Debian "unstable" is very near the cutting edge.  With "apt-build",
you can build from source, configured with optimizations for your
particular CPU.  If a Debian package fails to autobuild, it's
considered a bug!

> I might try Debian again just for to check it out again.

Email me (karlheg at hegbloom.net) and I'll burn you a CD.  Anyone else?

-- 
As any limb well and duly exercised, grows stronger,
the nerves of the body are corroborated thereby. --I. Watts.  .''`.
 Debian -- The blue collar Linux distribution.               : :' :
 <URL:http://www.debian.org/social_contract>		     `. `'




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