[Glastonbury] Newbie to Glastonbury LUG

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Oct 05, 2003 at 07:44:50PM +0100, Sean Miller wrote:
> > > Martin's Debian mates seem to like things to have been going a while
> before
> > > they'll certify them "stable" -- php 4.2.2 came out about 18 months ago
> and
> > > has been certified by its writers as stable for over a year (from
> memory) --
> > > I have heard rumours that Debian are now certifying the 486dx2/66 as a
> > > stable platform, Pentiums being in a beta testing stage and anything
> over
> > > 500Mhz "bleeding edge" ;-)
Sean,

You should know better :)  Stable (in Solaris terms) means people 
wanting to stick with 2.6 / 2.7 because they don't want to change their 
entire infrastructure or change to something new/untried (Oracle 9 vs
Oracle 11?).  Debian stable has had anything up to a couple of years of 
testing and is warranted as stable for long term stability.  Not bleeding 
edge, not changing every couple of months - the sort of thing you'd use 
at a busy ISP.  

Testing is designed for just that.  Changing daily, its a testing ground
for the next release and a proving ground for stuff that has bedded down
in unstable.  Think RH 7.3 users with updates who don't want to move
to 8.0/9.0.

Unstable is dynamic and updated daily or more often.  Think 
taroon/severn/fedora beta core release 2.

> Let's put my comments into context, before we start ranting that anybody
> using anything but Debian are somehow second-class citizens... first it
> seems that saying anything good about Windows was heresy, now it seems that
> installing anything other than Debian is almost as bad....
> 
> ...let's not lose sight of the fact that one of the joys of Linux is the
> variety of distros and options... we should be celebrating this, not
> knocking down anybody who has the guts to install anything other than
> Debian, a distribution that clearly has a lot of good points but is also far
> too "techy" and "geeky" for a vast majority of the population... *and* seems
> to take years and years to certify any third-party software (such as php) as
> "stable".
> 
> Here's to diversity. Debian are lucky to have you, Martin -- but it may not
> be everybody's cup of tea, however much you evangelise.
> 
Don't talk about diversity without knowing where you stand and trying a 
few distributions for an extended period.  Don't try a credentials war
on the mailing list either - you may find the experience unsettling.

For the record:

I've used, at various times and for varying periods and (have 
probably installed Linux a few hundred times overall on various 
machines and disks) one or more of the following:

Slackware 2.0 / 4.0 / 7.0

Linux FT 1.0/1.1/2.0

Red Hat 5.0/5.1/5.2/6.2/7.0/7.1/7.2/7.3/8.0/9.0 and betas

Mandrake 7x/8x/9/9.1

SuSE 6.4/7.1/8.0

Smoothwall / Gibraltar firewalls

and Debian 1.1/1.2/1.3/2.0/2.1/2.2/3.0 and unstable (I also develop for 
Debian and co-write the Distributions HOWTO).  I'll happily share 
experience with anyone who asks and may help them sort out hassles.

That's the Linuxes.  I've also used Free/Net/BSD's, of various 
vintages and installed as my own admin SCO UnixWare and SCO OpenServer 
and various vintages of OpenBSD.

I've used the following commercial Unixes:

SunOS 4.3/Solaris 2.5/2.6/2.8 on SPARC and 2.7 on Intel.

(Also OS/360, HP/UX, IRIX, UNICOS, OSF/1, Tru64 at one time or another).

I'll hack shell sripting fairly well and Perl less well - but I've been
using Linux actively since before October 1994 so call that an even 9 
years. I was using DOS and Windows for about 9 years before that and
am constrained to use Windows at work on occasion.  Oh, and I hacked
technical support for thirty people at work and ran an internet cafe for
a charity in my copious spare time :)

> This is LUGOG (Linux User Group Of Glastonbury) *NOT* DUGOG (Debian User
> Group of Glastonbury) -- PLEASE bear that in mind.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Sean
> 
We'd noticed :)

Andy

> 
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