[CLUE-Tech] Fedora vs Debain

[Nate Duehr]

Collins wrote:

> I prefer Gentoo. The Social Contract is similar to Debian without the arrogance. 

LOL that's rich.  How about this example from the opposite viewpoint:

"We at Gentoo know that compiling from source is better for you, even if 
it's been proven time and again that only a very few applications really 
make use of i686 kernel optimizations... and your machine really doesn't 
get all that much faster than your I/O subsystem... but if you REALLY 
want -- we did create a binary release system that's really messy 
because the default settings for the updater will download all source 
and rebuild it anyway even if you installed from binaries, because 
that's the One True Way."

Some say that's arrogant too, in its own way.  ;-)

I say: Linux in general is arrogant, because it can be... and because we 
all know that choice is good.  Lots and lots of choices leads to 
confusion which then leads to people getting louder and louder about 
their Linux distro religious beliefs.  ;-)

> Somebody mentioned that the Debian installer would be much better if there were only more volunteers.  There would be more volunteers if it were not for the stifling, stodgy 
atmosphere. Gentoo attracts hundreds of volunteers from around the 
world. So why didn't these volunteers gravitate towards Debian? Maybe 
it's because they would be embarrassed to offer a two-generations-old 
version of KDE and a kernel that is getting long in the tooth.

Nah... it's probably more to do with hype.  Gentoo has had it for a 
while.  Debian used to have developers flocking to it in droves, next 
Gentoo -- but another will come... and another... and another.  Plus 
good results are not measured in how many developers are working on 
something, but how good the code is that comes out!  (GRIN)

The main thing I hope I mentioned about the Debian installer (and the 
part the always holds it back) is a design issue.  It has to work across 
all the platforms Debian supports.  And there's a LOT of them.

Example: I still run Debian on a Sun Ultra 2 in the basement to test 
things out, and if I use Debian on an i386 machine for "production" and 
Debian on the Ultra for "testing", stuff is EXACTLY the same.

There's zero learning curve other than knowing that it uses "SILO" to 
boot instead of LILO or GRUB, really.  EVERYTHING, including the 
installer, works, acts, and smells the same.  That's pretty impressive.

(Well that, and because Solaris um... sucks.  I have to use it at work, 
who wants to use it at home?!)

I don't know if Gentoo ever added anything other than i386 family, but 
if they did, I doubt the installer looks the same/as pretty as their 386 
installer.  Writing an installer that "does the right thing" across 16 
(I think?) different hardware platforms is relatively difficult, I'd 
imagine.  And it eats up an inordinate amount of the installation 
software team's time.  Only people who want experience in that kind of 
cross-platform application ever bother helping out.

> A final note: Debian is certainly not the only distro with adequate (even copious) docuentation. 

I never said that.  I was talking about their standards which were 
mature and how those were well-documented LONG before the other Linux 
distros.

> I've been running the so called bleeding edge version of Gentoo for 6 months now (total time with Gentoo 3+ years), and I've actually encountered fewer problems than I did with the stable version. A big part of this is the install-from-source approach which eliminates the problem: your binary wasn't compiled with the same glibc, gcc, etc. that I'm running.

How often do you update your Gentoo?

I have a reasonably fast machine here (Athlon XP 2500+), and even with 
the faster machine than the old P-III 450 I originally tried out Gentoo 
on, I eventually got really tired of the never-ending download, compile, 
fix whatever stupid thing the package maintainer forgot in some obscure 
config file, wash-rinse-repeat cycle that never seemed to ever end with 
Gentoo on the desktop machine.

Sure the eye-candy was pretty, but the CPU was maxed out all day long 
for multiple days straight, and then you started over again whenever you 
heard about some useful change someone had made -- oh, heck... I'll just 
update everything again... or worse, something had a dependency that 
would force a rebuild of half the machine.  Ughhhh.

And it just seemed to constantly get in the way of me ever getting 
anything DONE on the box.

I tried it out and liked it, but I think I'd need to get a pair of 
monster boxes that were twins and let one just sit there doing compile 
duty all the time to keep up with Gentoo the way I wanted to manage it.

To be honest, I can't really find a Linux I really like much right now 
for desktop use -- and I've tried a bunch lately.  Mandrake 9.2, 10.0, 
Xandros, MEPIS, Fedora, Debian... they all have problems that make one 
thing or another unusable.

I'm typing this on the evil dreaded Winderz running Mozilla Mail.

But if I were to purchase a new box right now, it'd be a Mac where OSX 
gives a beautiful desktop environment and voila... there's a nice BSD 
tcsh shell there waiting anytime I need it.  My iMac G3 450 is getting a 
bit slow with all the OSX eye-candy, but it is so smooth and intuitive 
and the Free Beer software Apple bundles in these days is second to 
none.  And I can install Fink and have my "Debian-like" apt-get install 
for the command line, too!  ;-)

On servers -- I do like Debian.  Massive upgrades come along slowly long 
after all the weird bugs and tweaks have been figured out, and in the 
meantime security.debian.org is dedicated to putting out patches VERY 
fast for real security issues.

Not bleeding edge, but rock-solid, secure, and just sits in the basement 
and runs... and runs... and runs...

Even though it's been moved from one physical disk to two others over 
the years (for more disk space), and it's killed at least one hard disk 
after years of spinning, the main "server" box here at home is basically 
running on the same Debian installation (with two or three apt-get 
dist-upgrade's in there, of course) that it was running on in 1995. 
Config files either came along for the ride, or the package management 
warned me things were going to break, and generally -- it's the 
Energizer bunny of the "fleet" of computers here at the house.

Oh well, that's just me right now... grumpy and annoyed by anything that 
doesn't "just work".

I'll get a wild hair going and decide it's time to run all the boxes on 
whatever Linux-du-jour is the "next big thing" again sometime soon, I'm 
sure!

Right now I'm in "stable, works, quiet, no forest fires" mode, since I'm 
really busy at a new job and busy there...

Nate Duehr, nate at natetech.com