On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 13:22, Renaud Deraison wrote: > > In any case, the policy you call poor and/or stupid is the same for > > Debian, Mandrake or SuSE. Debian has slower release cycles, that's > > all. > > In a world where Joe Random has a T1-like internet access at his home > for $40 bucks per month, I really fail to understand the point of > "distributions" vs. "base system with ports".
(Disclamer: I've been one of the Debian developpers since 1996, so I might be biased :-) - "Distributions": If all my machines are running Debian 4.0 or RedHat 12.0, I know this implies all of them are running Apache 1.3.26 and Nessus x.y.z. - "Base system with ports": All my machines are running XyzBSD 4.0, but depending on when I installed a port on each machine, I may end up with a different version of Apache/Nessus/Whatever on each machine. For many people, indeed (including Joe Random and his $40 T1 at home), this is definatly not an issue. On the other hand sysadmins having hundreds of boxes tend to prefer the 1st solution. (For most servers, a 2 year old system + security fixes is very fine). > > It's also a volunteer-based distribution. > > I would also like to see the kind of support a guy running Nessus > > from the ports system in FreeBSD or installing it on RedHat would get from > > either one (I suspect close to 0, i.e. you're on your own). > > There are FreeBSD and RedHat user communities. RedHat has a larger > install base than Debian, and if you want support for Nessus, you should > ask it to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > Anyway, we're talking about religious issues, so I suggest we close the > thread (I'll even let you conclude it if you want) > > > -- Renaud
