[sclug] Weapon of choice

[Bob Franklin]

On Wed, 26 Nov 2003, Roland Turner wrote:

> What was your [Debian] pain?

The package management was a pain in the backside - not the maintenance
once the system was installed (I tend to do little with that) but just
getting the thing installed in the first place - you'd pick something and
it wouldn't resolve the dependancies for you; just adding one package
would be a merry-go-round of chasing dependancies and fixing clashes
before things would install.

Also, I believe it used SysV init in the days when few other people were
(I was using Slackware at that time) so that was also painful at the time.
I was less experienced in other UNIXes back then (1996) so I wasn't
prepared for the differences.


If it just goes on and runs solidly, it could be fine for me; I don't
want something which treats me like a moron but I don't want something
that works and doesn't require lots of jiggery pokery to get running.
It's difficult striking a balance between flexibility and control and
ease-of-use.

What do they do regarding patches and updates?  If I put the current
Debian on, how long can I expect security updates to be available which I
can just drop on and won't interfere with what's already there?


I don't mind trying anything out - I give everything a few days to impress
me on my desktop machine.  Upgrading my server will be a meaty operation
and I want to make the right choice.

  - Bob


-- 
 Bob Franklin <r.c.franklin at reading.ac.uk>          +44 (0)118 378 7147
 Systems and Communications, IT Services, The University of Reading, UK