[Gloucs] Cat amongst the... package mangement solutions

[Anthony Edward Cooper]

    Keith,

    If it works for you then go with it :-).

    I only used debian for a short while before I got fed up with it and 
tried something else that suited my likes better. Perhaps seems 
non-standard would be a better way of putting it. When I installed it I 
read quite a bit of the sysadmin documentation, initially I was quite 
keen on it, but I did notice that services were either controlled the 
SVR4 symlink way but they didn't use chkconfig (unlike most SVR4 style 
Linux systems) or you can control it via one file (never seen that 
before). I have used grub quite a bit, but on the day that I played with 
debian I didn't manage to get it to do what I wanted boot wise - but I 
didn't refer to the docs - however it's grub, which I have used loads of 
times before, so why should I have to... (under RH/WBEL/Mandrake no 
problem).

    But probably the most off putting thing was when I tried out deb I 
did a network based install. A very cut down system went onto my box and 
everything worked ok, X was fine. I logged in and got up a nice desktop 
with a debian logo backdrop. Minimum of fuss. So I downloaded the first 
4 CDs and started a proper install. At the first attempt I made what I 
thought was a reasonable selection of capabilities/packages and after 45 
minutes of answering questions every few minutes I got fed up and 
ALT-CTRL-DEL'ed the install. I then went for just one of their 
predefined install setups (developer workstation I think). That was 
better but at the end I had no working X nor mouse. When that was fixed 
I was presented with a different default look and feel to the desktop 
that I had had with the network install (which was a subset of what 
should have been installed this time).

    It was also missing some fundamental tools considering it was a 
developer workstation (e.g. emacs (personal preference I know - vim was 
there I believe), xterm !, most of the X developer/diagnostic tools 
(things like xev, xgc etc). Also loads of errors on bootup. Why have yet 
another shell called dash, just have an existing sh POSIX compliant 
shell, there are already plenty out there. Attempting to run 2.6 kernel 
daemons like hald with a 2.4 kernel (which is not such a bad choice of 
kernel as the 2.6 series is less stable).

    One thing that made me chuckle was every time I asked for a package 
I selected the `also recommended/suggested' ones as well. After a while 
I marvelled at all the weird and wonderful things being started on my 
box that seemed to have no relationship to what I had additionally 
installed.

    It seemed to me that debian had a less that easy install and then 
you had to spend quite a bit of time aptituding the stuff that you 
wanted onto the box. Which is fine, I'm just an install and go person. 
With RH/WBEL and SlackWare you get a fairly standard set of tools that 
you would expect from a Unix system by simply doing the install 
everything approach. There can be a bit of disk space wastage but disks 
are large and life is short.

    I was very impressed with their site, the ease of navigation and the 
extensive documentation - easier to find stuff when you don't know where 
to look than the RedHat site.

    I was in a fairly brutal mood at the time. I had tried out a number 
of distros and wanted to find one that suited my needs and likes. I was 
a SlackWare user so I'm used to simple fast installs (albeit no 
configured X), stable systems that don't issue forth any error messages 
and uncluttered distros (whilst I now run WBEL I do wonder where that 
7GB of disk space went to - I know that it is very forgiving about what 
software it will run (having loads of backward compatibility libraries) 
but SlackWare is about a third of the size). It's a pity SW don't do 64 
bit...

    It's all very subjective at the end of the day.

    Anyway I better get back to sorting out my diskless booting. I'm 
using a VMware boot server to diskless boot an MS-Windows XP only box 
into WBEL in order to run MS-Windows inside a VM  so that I can use NT 
Backup to backup the quiescent NTFS partition (when using NT Backup on a 
live system it misses out quite a lot of system files and you always 
have the issue of restoring a system (it doesn't support ASR on XP or is 
it just XP Home - which is what I have got)). Got it working - just need 
to tidy up a few things. I need to get a life!

    Anyway what ever your choice of distro - happy hacking.

    Anyone interested in a talk on PXE installing/diskless booting? 
Can't promise when, sometime in the new year...

    Regards,

    Tony.

Keith Edmunds wrote:
> On Sat, 02 Dec 2006 01:34:30 +0000
> Anthony Edward Cooper <aecooper at coosoft.plus.com> wrote:
>
> (Of Debian):
>
>   
>> A bit of a non-standard Unix environment
>>     
>
> May I ask why you say that? (I don't want to argue about whether it is
> non-standard or not, I'm just curious).
>
> Keith
>
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