--- ken keanon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > There are so many distros out there its confusing. > Any reason(s) why Debian should be the preferred > choice?
I switched after many happy years of using SuSE (which is a great distro to get started with). Debian has a package and dependency management system that makes upgrading a breeze. Apt-get changed how I view OS's. For instance, with SuSE I found myself having to aquire CD's if a new release came out and I wanted the latest gear (they do an ftp installation which trails a little behind the CD releases, but is a *new* release - upgrades from, for example, SuSE 8.2 to 9 weren't "slick"). Sure, you could download patches or security updates for the packages you already had, but upgrading KDE or the like was never as easy as it was supposed to be. With Debian, I've set my install source to Debian Sarge and I just run apt-get update, apt-get upgrade on a weekly basis. I will always be up to date. Also, seeing the direction RedHat have moved in (which I'm not intentionally judging here) made me nervous. I was installing SuSE in schools here in the UK, but ended up with 7.1 in school 'A', 7.2 in school 'B', 8.1 in school 'C' etc. And what if SuSE decided to follow RedHat's model? My main selling point to schools is financial: I can get a Windows2000 server license *very* cheaply through my Local Education Authority. So I needed to switch to a *community* based distro. One where a company didn't dictate the direction. I wanted to know that the distro I was becoming familiar with, and promoting, and advocating was still going to be *free* (free and free), easily obtainable and philosophically sound. To sum up: Debian is... 1. Easily maintained and upgradable, 2. Not beholdened to the decisions of people looking at the bottom line. Hope that helps. -- Matt > > Any statistics from any source(s) to proof the > popularity of Debian? > > I'm in the dark waiting to be enlightened. > > Cheers > > Ken > > > --------------------------------- > Do you Yahoo!? > Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. www.yahoo.com ___________________________________________________________ ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]