[clue-talk] Hello CLUE

[Collins Richey]

On 7/31/06, T. Joseph Carter <tjcarter at bluecherry.net> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 31, 2006 at 05:39:04PM -0600, Nate Duehr wrote:
> > Hi Joseph.  Welcome to town.  I like your posts already!  (And I bet you
> > know how to use a turn-signal, unlike the majority of folks who've moved
> > here in the last 5 years or so!)  ;-)
>
> You'd bet wrong as I have never driven a car, and am not likely to in the
> near future.  *grin*

I guess we won't be seeing you at CLUE meetings, then, or do you have
a full time chauffeur?


> >
> > I've been doing all sorts of Distros for a very long time, and the "one
> > thing I can count on" is that Debian Stable will WORK for servers, no
> > muss, no fuss, the damn thing just runs and runs and runs and gets
> > timely security patches.
>
> It is, but only at the cost of being potentially unable to install on a
> new server.  There's also something to be said for holding up ia32, amd64,
> and powerpc architectures for a month while you wait for an Atari Falcon
> to finish compiling X before release.  ;)  Or more importantly, before
> releasing a security patch for other platforms.

Holding up is the primarily criteria for Debian release. If it doesn't
work on all supported platforms, it's not ready for the 90% of us who
use the most popular platform.

>
>
> > All other distros make Linux look stupid and unprofessional in this
> > regard.  Debian sucks for desktops, but for server farms that you have
> > no time to screw around with constantly, there's nothing better.
>
> Again, I'd have no trouble with Debian stable if they'd actually consider
> things like an updated kernel and maybe X11 now and then.

I would not say that Deian sucks for desktops, it just doesn't
sparkle. I was quite pleasantly surprised when I put up a Debian
Testing system. Not as polished as Ubuntu Dapper, but parsecs ahead of
anything Debian did in the past. Neither Debian nor Ubuntu is likely
to consider a really up-to-date kernel, and Ubuntu has screwed the
pooch thus far with the attempt to incorporate modular X.

>  I digress though, sarge has the same problem regarding relatively recent hardware,
> in the range of six months to a year old.

Yep, but the manufacturers insure that new hardware remains just
beyond the grasp of Linux. Reverse engineering takes time.
>

In short there is no perfect distro. I love Gentoo, but Ubuntu (maybe
Debian too?) is way ahead of Gentoo when it comes to support for USB
scanners and printers. My all-in-one  (Epson CX4200) worked out of the
box on Ubuntu Dapper, but I'm still struggling with Gentoo. Ubuntu has
a major udev rules file devoted to every scanner under the sun, but
it's roll your own with Gentoo.

Sun/Solaris may be miles ahead with big iron and guaranteed response
times on many terabyte databases, as Nate said, but they've never had
to open up their support for every peripheral under the sun, or their
code would be just as bloated as Linux. It's just a tad easier to
tune/debug a kernel, etc., for your own proprietary hardware.

-- 
Collins Richey
     If you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries
     of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for.