On Sat, 03 Apr 2004 04:18:27 -0500
Tom Buskey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On Wed, 2004-03-31 at 11:40, Jeff Macdonald wrote:
> > [snip]
> > So that's my rather biased take on it all. Take it with a grain of
> > salt, and with the disclosure that I am a known rpm bigot and still
> > somewhat of a Red Hat bigot (though not as much with last year's changes
> > ;-)).
>
> I've been a fan of Redhat in the past because it was A) fairly current,
> B) easy to download, C) easy to keep up to date and D) well supported by
> 3rd party vendors.
>
> I could get a RH9 iso, burn it and have a system that most admins are
> familiar with and lots of 3rd party support.
>
> I can do the same for my desktop with Mandrake, but I've felt vendors
> didn't support it as well as RH (ximian, VMware). So D isn't quite
> there, but it exceeds RH with A and C (rpmdrake).
>
> RHEL fails with B. I also feel that Redhat isn't going to fix this and
> WBEL aims to provide this. WBEL can fail by not being as complete as
> RHEL and D as most 3rd party vendors won't support it
>
> Debian fails with A (the stable version is very dated). Yes, I know <<<
> unstable is out there, yada, yada. It's not that obvious to a <<<
> non-debian enthusiast. If they fix this and get 3rd party support, <<<
> it becomes more attractive. <<<
>
> SuSE fails with B; you can't download a current ISO. You can do a
> network install, but I'd rather have a CD for when my system isn't
> connected via ethernet. If Novell starts putting an ISO up, I can see
> SuSE becoming more mainstream.
>
> Thoughts?
(Responding to Tom's mention of Debian)
There does exist a distribution of Debian which solves A, B, and C, and
which you could describe as D, third-party support for Debian.
Libranet.
A. Libranet is very current. It mixes into Stable from Testing and
Unstable, yielding an up-to-date distribution of packages which have been
vetted and proven to work together.
B. It's easy to download - ISO images. "Easy" if you have the bandwidth.
I'm limited to tin cans and string, so I get the real CDs.
It's true that they charge. (For the most current version; the older one
is free_as_in_beer.) If you count your time as worth anything at all the $$
is a bargain.
Buying Libranet gets you real Free Software, not the Creeping Proprietary
which has made RH, and others, increasingly unworkable. Your interest may
vary, but Creeping Proprietary seems to have been an underlying thread here.
CP was the primary reason I decided to dump RH. (I discovered afterward that
RPM Pain was a sufficient second.)
C. Libranet is easy to keep up to date. I am no Debian guru, but Synaptic
and apt-get have made it a piece of cake. Dependency Hell is a thing of
the past. (Do stay away from dist-upgrade once you mix in from Testing and
Unstable.)
I don't know of anyone who has tried Libranet who has reported unfavorably.
There have been many _glowing_ reports, including some on this list.
Libranet is Linux's best-kept secret.
.02,
-Bill
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