[PLUG] Rat off a Sinking Ship?

[alan]

On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, Jeff Blain wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 07:41:19AM -0800, alan wrote:
> > On 22 Jan 2003, Brian Beattie wrote:
> > 
> > > On Tue, 2003-01-21 at 14:00, guy1656 wrote:
> > > > I am running Mandrake 8.1
> > > > 
> > > > Now that they are filing for bankruptcy, what's the simplest way to migrate
> > > > to something 'still viable?'
> > > 
> > > debian
> > 
> > <insert distribution flamewar here.>
> 
> What is the point in this?

"Debian is the answer" is a usual comment that come up when people ask 
about distributions.  Many of the Debian people (as well as others) are 
quite zealous on one side of the argument or the other.  

Personally I have some problems with Debian.  It does some things right 
and many things wrong.  It works if you run a pure Debian system, but does 
not react well if you do not.  (I had to deal with such an upgrade over 
the weekend.  2.2 to 3.0 does not upgrade as cleanly as the pro-debian 
crowd would like to believe.

> > I don't think he could install Debian.  He has a 56k modem line, if that. 
> > Most Debian distributions insist on downloading anything and everything.
>  
> Are you saying that Debian doesn't come on CD's? Also, what do you mean
> by "downloading anything and everything". Are you saying it won't
> download off the CD? Please clue me in, because I don't understand what
> your trying to say here.

Go to Debian.org and try to get current ISOs.  Damn near impossible.  (I 
tried.  I found them, but it took hours of searching.  And they were not 
"official".)  The current Debian discs I have found assume that you 
install enough to bootstrap and then download everything else via apt-get.  
That works if you have bandwidth.  

Guy does not have bandwidth.  (He lives in Warren, OR.  It is half way 
between here and the coast.)

As for the functionality of Debian...  My experiences do not match up to 
the ads.  Debian is not as trouble free as claimed, in my experience.  
(Especially during an upgrade.  Whoever decided to move /var/spool/mail to 
/var/mail and not move the spool and/or symlink things together needs to 
be *hurt*. By me.)

This conversation usually devolves into a religious war because some 
people believe that apt-get solves everything.  It doesn't.  Then again, I 
am at the point where I hate all distributions equally. Some more equally 
than others...