[CLUE-Tech] Fedora vs Debain

[Nate Duehr]

(This is getting long, but I kept the context so it makes sense.  Sorry 
all.)

(Oh yeah, I'm still trying to figure out what "Debain" is!  Tee hee...)

Collins wrote:

>On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 21:11:05 -0600
>Nate Duehr <nate at natetech.com> wrote:
>
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>>Collins wrote:
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>>>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 ...
>>because that's the One True Way."
>>    
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>
>[ rest snipped ] 
>
>I don't know where you dug that up, Nate, but it's not the philosophy of Dan Robbins (founder of Gentoo). Here's a more appropriate excerpt:
>
>"The Gentoo philosophy, in a paragraph, is this. Every user has work they need to do. The goal of Gentoo is to design tools and systems that allow a user to do their work pleasantly and efficiently as possible, as they see fit. Our tools should be a joy to use, and should help the user to appreciate the richness of the Linux and free software community, and the flexibility of free software."
>
>If the desire to create better tools constitutes arrogance, then so be it. 
>  
>

NOW NOW... this is getting silly.  I was obviously joking and creating a 
"viewpoint" from what happens on various IRC channels, support groups 
for Gentoo and other places.  Gentoo as a whole is not Dan Robbins 
anymore either -- it's bigger than just his wishes at this point.  The 
vast majority of his fans and users are dyed-in-the-wool fans of 
compiling everything from source to squeeze performance out of systems, 
with a total disregard for how much time the system wastes getting 
there.  ;-)

You and others in this discussion had taken some liberties with stating 
what the Debian developers "feel" also -- mine was just a rebuttal to 
those. 

I could quote Debian's Social Contract here too, but that would be as 
pointless as you quoting the "official" word of Dan Robbins.  Dan's a 
great guy and I have nothing against Gentoo -- I was just refuting some 
of the made-up comments about Debian's "philosopy" that were completely 
contrived, by creating another completely contrived quotation from the 
Gentoo entity as I've perceived it over the last few years.  I can't 
believe you took it seriously! 

>  
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>>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.  ;-)
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>IMO, horse apples. I don't know the origin of frenetic religious beliefs, but I doubt that confusion has anything to do with it. Small minds would be a better bet.
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You've never seen the mob mentality or any studies about it?  Behaviour 
you might attribute to "small minds" happens very easily in even the 
most intelligent non-reckless humans from time to time when they 
"believe" in something and there's a real or perceived large group of 
people also "believing".

Truthfully, most linux distributions are based off of a few specific 
core values which that particular Linux distribution expounds that they 
have done "better" over another.  In reality, they're all pretty much 
the same, all the way down to the source -- the core code is no 
different from one distro to the next.  Yet rarely do they work together 
to try to re-merge into one distribution from two -- they don't believe 
the "other guys" know what they're doing.

And the analogy is that it's very similar to various real-world 
religions.  The users/believers have what can only be described as 
"faith" that the ~20 people or so who REALLY make the decisions about 
where that distro goes will continue to go in the path they enjoy.  And 
they rarely think the other religions are sane.  Even though the core 
beliefs are the same.

>>>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)
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>I honestly don't know anyone (developer or user) who has chosen Gentoo because of hype. Debian (and RedHat and SUSE ...) certainly have enough hype as well. Good results come out of Gentoo and Debian, et al.
>  
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How did they hear about it in the first place?   Word of mouth = 
personal hype in the open-source world... only a couple of Linux distros 
have the budget to do what I would characterize as "Corporate Hype"... 
commercials, advertising, etc.  Someone saying "Dude! This is soooo 
cool, you have to try it!" is hype, just like IBM's TV commercials.

>>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.
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>Not much different with Gentoo.
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Gentoo (as best as I can tell) supports: x86 <handbook-x86.xml>, alpha 
<handbook-alpha.xml>, amd64 <handbook-amd64.xml>, hppa 
<handbook-hppa.xml>, mips <handbook-mips.xml>, ppc <handbook-ppc.xml>, 
sparc <handbook-sparc.xml>
Debian supports: x86, alpha, hppa, mips, ppc, sparc PLUS s390, dec-mips, 
motorola 680x0, and  ia-64
(I think amd64 is missing from the list because it's just a kernel 
change after x86 install.)

Gentoo's support of the other platforms other than i386 came along 
"recently" in their timeline.  Actually while researching this response 
I was surprised they had so many platforms now.  They didn't for a very 
long time.

>>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.
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>Not much different with Gentoo. Only platform-unique functions are different.
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Again, many platforms have been added relatively recently.

>>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.  
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>Except for the platform-unique stuff (booting, file system layout, etc.), the Gentoo install is identical across all platforms. It varies somewhat because there are options to install everything from source or start with a pre-compiled base.
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And there's only quick-install instructions for two platforms.  That 
leads me to believe there's not much "simple" about the others...?  If 
they're that similar, why not make those documents generic?  I have no 
other information to go on, as I'm not going to take time to install 
Gentoo on multiple platforms.  And the gentoo "installer"... isn't.  
It's just a shell and a set of instructions.  Debian's installer 
actually does things for the user.  It's not much of a fair comparison.  
Any supported platform can be bootstraped to a shell -- we were talking 
about installation programs!

(I 100% agree that Gentoo's installation is probably the same across all 
platforms, but that's not much of a feat when all it is is a shell and a 
document that says "type this, then type that".)

>>>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.
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>So Debian has been around for a while longer. So has Slackware. Gentoo hasn't. 
>
So you agree that Gentoo is going through a phase where it has little in 
the way of documented standards?  Okay.  That *was* my point, after all.

>  
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>>>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.
>>>      
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>>How often do you update your Gentoo?
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>Sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly.
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Okay. 

>>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
>>never end with Gentoo on the desktop machine.
>>
>>Ughhhh. And it just seemed to constantly get in the way of me ever
>>getting anything DONE on the box.
>>
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>Sounds like you're not exactly a fan of install-from-source. I find the maintenance mostly painless. It's only when one of the mega packages (kde, etc.) enters a new cycle that thing get tedious. Even then, I just crank up the upgrade at 9PM ad sleep on it. Anything smaller, I just let it churn away while I read emails.
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I'm not a fan because there's zero need for it.  It's just a waste of 
time in most cases.  One guy can just as easily compile something and 
distribute it to others as can a hundred people compile it.  What's the 
point? 

There have been a number of real-world studies that show the systems 
perform about the same on the same hardware... so the whole compile from 
source thing to me just seems to be one of those cosmetic differences 
between distros people do just to say it's cool.  (And I'll agree that 
it is.)

It doesn't really change the end-user experience with the finished 
product -- other than they have to wait forever between upgrades for 
their machine to compile things.  If the end goal is to create better 
software for "the world", spending hours re-compiling things someone 
else could do once seems fruitless.  That's just my opinion.  most of 
the time some guy somewhere can compile a package "sanely" following 
some standards (ah those standards again) and that package will work for 
99% of the end-users out there. 

>>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.
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>Lots of people swear by Libranet, if you like the Debian setup.
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Haven't tried it.  Frankly, Knoppix for x86 platforms is probably the 
"easiest" and works the best for many folks who just want to get 
something done.

>  
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>>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. 
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>Apple is producing a fine product. They've grafted a superb desktop environment onto a stable base (BSD).
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Definitely agreed there.  They just have a lot of FUD to get past.  (I 
had a face to face conversation with a guy here at work today who didn't 
even know you could get to a shell on OSX, and his general demeanor was 
that the "simplicity" of the mac software made it "too simple" for his 
use as a professional computer person, so he'd never purchase one.  LOL!)

>  
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>>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.
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>You'll find very much the same situation with Gentoo. How many servers
>care about KDE or QT updates? Gentoo responds VERY fast for real security issues. 
>  
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Good point.  I guess I may have been comparing apples to oranges there 
on that one!

>>Not bleeding edge, but rock-solid, secure, and just sits in the
>>basement  and runs... and runs... and runs...
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>Those who run Gentoo servers say the same thing; runs and runs and runs.
>Interestingly enough, Dan Robbins doesn't recommend Gentoo for servers, yet. Gentoo is still a work in progress. That doesn't stop a lot of Gentooers, however.
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Ah... I do worry a bit when someone says "Don't do that!"... especially 
someone as high up the food chain in Gentoo as Dan!  The old joke: 
Doctor it hurts when I do THIS! comes to mind...

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>>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. 
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>You could probably get the same reliability out of any number of distros.
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Yes but could I have upgraded cleanly between major releases?  
Definitely not with RedHat.  I've personally watched RH destory 
perfectly working systems in "upgrade" mode.  Never ever has a 
dist-upgrade ever not warned me about anything it was going to break.  
It's a release requirement for Debian -- and I like that.  Gentoo 
handles it by constantly being in a state of upgrade, which makes it 
rather difficult to put new servers in the farm later and get them to 
the same release point easily.  Trade-offs of different philosophies, I 
suppose.

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>>Right now I'm in "stable, works, quiet, no forest fires" mode ...
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>Right now, I'm in a try out new things, quiet, no forest fires mode! The so called bleeding edge doesn't involve much bleeding with Gentoo. The real bleeding edge is with the developers and CVS versions of products. This laptop is within a few days of released, current stuff, and it works perfectly.
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Sounds like you've had a better experience than I had... things were 
constantly broken (perl, KDE, various other large packages) in the two 
months I ran Gentoo on the desktop machine.  Maybe they got it under 
control finally, but it turned me off big-time.

Nate