[CLUE-Tech] Fedora vs Debain

[Keith Hellman]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2004 at 06:28:13AM -0600, Chris Hirsch wrote:
> I've been using Redhat since about 6.0 and maybe even 5.5...I started 
> with Slackware and am now experimenting with Fedora Core 2 Test 2....

My experience has been with obscure Linux distros from yesteryear
(ETLinux anyone?), Caldera, LFS, and most recently (past 2-3 years) with
SuSE.  In the past I have tried debian or a debian derivitive but I
never really tried to *learn* debian.  I don't do Red Hat.

Recently (past year?) I simply got tired of bouncing around, so
I began looking very hard at distros.  There were certain things I
*really* wanted:
- ease of upgrades; I'm so tired of simply re-installing
- top of the line package system
  - I want to be able to install package dependencies automatically
  - If I've gone to the trouble of configuring a package, damn it, I
	want it to stay that way
  - I want to be able to override *specific files in a package*
  - I want an easy way to document *exactly* which packages I have
	installed on a machine.
  - I want my own kernel builds supported by the package system
- a security focused distro
- an install procedure & distro supporting LVM (debian sarge beta does!)
- an install procedure that provides a *very minimal* install

I settled on debian.  This is probably due to a couple of reasons:
- I was able to search and find answers to the above features quickly in
  the debian mailing lists & site
- I've had such poor experiences with RPM based systems that I looked at
  those last (after I had done a fair amount of reading about debian)
- I tend to use alot of old, slow hardware for experimentation.  Which
  made me leary of systems such as gentoo

After deciding to give Debian an honest try, and this is most important,
I actually *worked* at figuring out how to do things *correctly* in
debian.  This was not the easiest or quickest process, but it has
definetly paid off.  I am by no means a debian expert; I have dug myself
into holes with debian, but I've learned how to dig myself out & gleen
some knowledge from the whole escapade.

From what I hear, fedora seems to have taken the debian approach to
package management (retrofitted onto RPM?).  I dunno, I have not looked
into it.  I am sure there are other distros that provide all the
features I was looking for in debian, I simply settled on debian first.

AGAIN: I think the key here, if you want to get away from
experimentation mode in Linux, is to *LEARN YOUR DISTRO*.  I suspect I
would have been happy with an RPM or build-from-source based system if I
had sat down to *really learn* the distro.  I've got no motivation to do
that now because I'm very pleased with debian.

> I'm really trying to figure out if Debian is really that much better 
> than the Red Hat/Fedora distros...certainly as I learn more about feeds 
> and apt-get with Fedora I wonder why they didn't do something like that 
> to begin with...as I read more about Debian I've come to learn its more 
Agreed.  The 'Dependency Nightmare' & Upgrade^H^H^H err, ReInstall
process of (old?) RPMs systems always frustrated me to no end. 

> of a "developers" distro...I consider myself a developer but I've never 
> ran Deb...is it really that much better? If so in what ways...I tried 
I think you feel that Debian is a developers' distro because pretty much
all the documentation & online support is written by people who are
developers (I kinda like that aspect).  Debian doesn't have a management
team that's pushing joe-user usability.  On the other hand, there are
certainly Debian distros that *are* much more user friendly...

> the Sarge distro about a month ago and it was just kinda hard...granted 
Keep in mind that the sarge installer is still beta, I've used it twice
successfully, but I don't think it is ready for prime time yet.

Just my 2c

-- 
Keith Hellman                             #include <disclaimer.h>
khellman at mcprogramming.com                from disclaimer import standard
public key @ www.mcprogramming.com

"Mod me down, and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

-- Gothmolly http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=103730&cid=8837481
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