[Nottingham] Debian devotion [was: OE Reply Fixer]

[James Duncan]

Robert Davies wrote:

>On Wednesday 05 March 2003 17:23, you wrote:
>  
>
>>Martin Garton wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, .waffle wrote:
>>>      
>>>
>>>>I type "apt-get install xfree86" and it gets installed, no questions
>>>>asked.
>>>>
>>>>Sure, Debian has many other redeeming features, but this is surely the
>>>>greatest? Oh, and yeah, it's free, and maintained by geeks, not corporate
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>apt-get used to be only for .deb based distributions, but its long since
>>>been ported to rpm. I've been using it in redhat for well over a year.
>>>      
>>>
>>The difference with debian is that it is designed to be easily
>>upgradable from major version to major version via apt/deb, and the
>>    
>>
>
>But that feature is something that there was problems with for ppl moving to 
>Woody it was one of the issues that delayed Woody's release.
>
>RedHat and SuSE both support updates via RPM, and it does work for ppl, with 
>some caveats so long as they have followed the rules on installing software  
>and used rpm database or installed in to /usr/local (or /opt which in 
>practice will also be safe).
>
>You'll be able to screw up a Debian system in similar ways, if you try hard 
>enough, most likely fewer ppl are tempted, because there's fewer different 
>sources of .deb, and installing using apt, is  easy.
>
>As actually SuSE's online update, uses YaST and can be done on command line 
>and in cron job, I don't think they can be that far away from being able to 
>provide a text-mode software install command, which solves the dependencies 
>without going into the ncurses(3) or Qt(3) User Interface.
>
>  
>
>>packages tend to be better quality as they are running through the
>>Debian testing process rather then me having to take them from everyone
>>and their dog.  The Debian apt repositories also have much, much more
>>vendor-tested software then is typically availible for rpm dists.
>>    
>>
>
>Fine but waiting 2 years for unstable to become stable, and to get reasonably 
>up to date software is not acceptable.  If you run unstable then you become 
>part of the 'Debian testing process'.
>
>My problem was, I needed a 'Fresh' release, packages that had been tested 
>reasonably and passed from unstable, that would add new software, and major 
>releases of things like Destkops, which don't impact underlying server code.
>
>Rob
>
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>  
>
Like testing maybe?  Packages go to this when they have cleared 
unstable, though I use unstable without problems.  It is worth noting 
that unstable packages have already been proven stable in the 
experimental distribution, and I have had my machine broken exactly 0 
times tracking sid (unstable) pretty much daily.  IMHO the name does a 
lot to put people off but it is as stable as say mandrake.