[Gllug] Debian hopeless

bradut at intelesuri.net bradut at intelesuri.net
Tue Mar 9 06:53:23 UTC 2004


On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 10:59:27PM +0000, Stephen Harker wrote:
> Christopher Hunter wrote:
> >On Monday 08 Mar 2004 12:01 pm, Matthew King wrote:
> >
> >>I do find it fascinating how Linux being unable to load a network driver
> >>module makes Debian hopeless.
> >>
> >>Anyone care to explain that one?
> >
> >
> >Perhaps you didn't quite get what he meant.....
> >
> >Nowadays, you'd expect any good distro to be very good at detecting 
> >hardware and automagically loading the right driver or module for it.  
> >
> >My experience has been that Suse and Mandrake usually get it right - 
> >Debian has always been real grief to install and configure (for me!), so 
> >I've avoided it for a good while.  Debian's probably better than it was, 
> >but I'll still stick with distros that I find easy to install, configure 
> >and maintain.
> 
> But when you look at that statement analytically, you install a system 
> only once and then run it for several years potentially. However you 
> configure and maintain that system constantly over that time. Debian has 
> many advantages when it comes to configuring and maintaining a system 
> that (for me anyway) more than outweigh any minor inconvenience getting 
> it installed in the first place.
> I'd much rather a system that can be maintained hassle-free for years 
> but that might take an hour longer to install in the first instance.
> Having said that, I've installed Debian quite a number of times without 
> any hardware issues at all and that makes the odds even better.
> 

I second that. Sometimes I think that people should try other
distributions a bit longer before Debian, in this way the advantages of
Debian over other distributions could be appreciated in their true
light. I've started with Linux, knowing nothing not just about the OS but
about networking, dns and many other computing concepts. I remember
installing SuSe, then RedHat, then Mandrake... all in all I had working
systems which allowed me to browse the net, check email, listen to the
radio on realplayer, see pictures from my digital camera...(no, hang on
this last one only happened in Debian..;)
And it might have been all ok, having needed only these functions from
my computer. When I started learning about other systems, how to run
your own webserver, on the back of a database, supported by a
mailserver... this is when the fun began. I remember circling forever in
frustration over the wysiwig for networking in mandrake and making no
progress whatsoever in understanding of where is my gateway set up, and
couldn't figure out where is my hostname defined. When it came to
installing the actual software I found that I just couldn't keep up
anymore. 
In the end the deciding factor was that people that I've started to
respect from various forums and mailing lists related to the software I
wanted to learn more about, were for most part running Debian, so I gave
it a go, having bruised my head quite heavily against the wall before
that, and haven't looked back since.
I still have a lot to learn, but for better or worse my main system
running various software that supports my learning, has been working
without a glitch 24/7 for almost 2 years now, and I am so far a happy
user.

Sorry for the length of this message, but I find it only fair to say
something positive about Debian, as a thank you
for all the folks that make it all possible.
-- 
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