[Gllug] What's so good about Debian?

[Xander D Harkness]

Richard Jones wrote:

>Debian has a very steep learning curve. Indeed the installation
>process is rumoured to be so complex and unfriendly to keep the oiks
>out (this could be an urban myth!). But once you get it installed:
>
>* Apt and dpkg are a great packaging system. It's really very well
>  thought out. It also does proper dependency analysis, which is a big
>  win over Red Hat < Fedora.
>  
>
Not to start a flame war - just an question to allow me to learn more 
about apt and dpkg. (Though I am sure some interesting FWs have started 
with a small question :-)

What advantage does apt have in terms of dependancy resolution over rpm 
--aid or apt, or yum or even up2date which supports RHN, apt and yum.

I fully understand the rigid requirements for packages to be included in 
the deb archives; however there is excellent cooperation between 
freshrpms, newrpms, dag and the Fedora project.

>* Apt contains every possible package you're ever likely to use, so you
>  will rarely if ever need to install from source.
>
>* The Debian policy means that all applications work the same. eg. They
>  all have their installation files under /etc/<appname> and they all
>  put their user binaries in /usr/bin and so on. This is much cleaner
>  and also means you don't need to go searching for a configuration file,
>  log file or documentation.
>  
>
Agreed, logical standards should be adhered to, RH, SuSE and others do 
support the Linux Standards Base providing this style of organisation.

>
>* You'll never have to reinstall again, because you can keep tracking
>  stable/testing.
>
>  
>
That is one thing that I do like in particular and Debian put a 
phenomenal about of effort to maintain the scripts that manage this.  
For large hosting hotels with a few thousand virtual domains the move 
from apache 1.X to 2.X on Debian stable would be interesting.  (I only 
stick this in to give a gentle prod ;-)  I got a little btten by that 
upgrade :-)

>Tip for easier installation: Spend a few quid and buy some CDs from
>the Linux Emporium.
>  
>
Disclaimer:  I am a RH employee; however am genuinely interested in how 
*everything* works :-)

Kind regards
Xander


-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug