On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Jon Biddell">
>
> > >1) Strong policy
> > 1a - A bitch to install, if your goal is to get a productive system up
> > quickly (vs VERY bloody clowly with NT)
>
> What does strong policy have to do with the installation? Installing Debian
> is a little more technically oriented than the rest (ie. it's not pretty,
> and it doesn't skimp on the details), but it's the same old stuff.
>
> I routinely get potato machines up and running in 30 minutes. Configged for
> the network, and with all the sillier Gnome options changed. The *only*
> thing that gets in my way is X3. Such a frustration coming back from X4. :)
Actually Debian is undoubtedly harder for a true newbie to install than
almost any other distro, from the method of kernel module selection,
through to dselect, where when your dependencies can conflict, and a
single keystroke can cause you to lose a lot of work. That said, I
install debian smoothly, and I wouldn't trade debian's control and rapid
upgradability for any other distro, but it /is/ harder to install for a
newbie.
Also, Debian policy can be a complete pain in the arse. For example, the
newbie with a little familiarity with other distros may do exactly what
the window manager doco tells them to do to change window managers, only
to be suprised when it doesn't work because of a symlink in
/etc/alternatives. Does the Debian way make sense in general? Yes. Does
it make sense as an isolated way to do things in practice, sometimes in
direct disagreement to the doc? Not really.
> > >2) Debian is a live distribution
> >
> > 2a - Which can be dangerous - if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
>
> That's precisely why stable exists. If there's any project that pulls "ain't
> broke, don't fix" to the extreme, it's Debian.
>
> Some machines *need* to be static, whilst others *need* to be dynamic -
> Debian does both in a straightforward way. Choose your poison.
Actually, I'd level criticisms at both ends. The lag in producing a
stable distro is too long, as almost everyone in the project would
accept, and needs to be reduced a little (though I don't think anyone is
aiming for up to date in the sense of the RH recent fiascos and nor
should they). At the other end, when was the last mozilla deb produced
in unstable? I would suggest that it's hardly recent enough to describe
debian as "live" enough, regardless of whether you run Sid, Woody, or
Potato. The browser space is hardly an uniportant area, and the delay
would never occur with say RPMs.
> > >3) Receptive developers
> >
> > 3a - No more receptive than SuSE, Deadrat, etc. The centralised
> > bug-tracking is a big plus.
>
> Here's a different spin: Debian developers are so receptive, that you too
> can become an official maintainer! :)
Another criticism, debian is becoming a closed system and you can't
easily become a debian developer. Existing developers view new
developers with suspiscion as wanting to become a developer for ego
reasons and the DAM is a bottleneck. For endless discussion on this
subject subscribe to debian-devel, I unsubscribed because of this topic
alone.
> Bug reporting with Debian is good. It's really satisfying when you get an
> email back after reporting a bug - a fix, a new package release date, a
> thank you, and a bit of self-deprecation thrown in ("I can't believe I did
> that!" etc).
Bug Tracking in debian is definately a strength.
> > >4) Debian has more packages
> >
> > 4a - Hmmmmm.... I'll let this slide.
>
> I think SuSE has more.
Yeah, SuSE has a lot, but so does Debian, a strength in both
distros. Debian doesn't include anything that doesn't meet the debian
definition of free, and you can decide for yourself whether that's a
good thing or not. I think it is.
The strongest praise I can give to debian is that I have tried every
major distro, and I don't have a rose coloured view of any of them, as
you may be able to tell from the above critique of Debian, which is my
personal favorite. Personally, I would never use any other
distro. Debian rocks, try it for yourself, but give it a decent try, at
least a month. You too may have crticisms, but I doubt you'll change
back.
cheers,
Martin
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
