[Sussex] A rant on using different distributions

[Paul Tansom]

Matthew Macdonald-Wallace wrote:
> Simon Huggins wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 27, 2005 at 11:23:08AM -0400, Matthew Macdonald-Wallace
>> wrote:
<snip>
> DSL states that it is a compact version of debian, based on Knoppix.  It
> offers you the chance to use the debian sources.list (which I have
> chosen to do) and it uses all the debian tools such as apt and dpkg.
> 
> In my experience, if it looks like debian, smells like debian and act
> likes debian, then it's probably debian... :)
> 
> My opinion,

I've not really tried other flavours of Debian yet (*), but from my
understanding most tend to take Debian as a starting point, use the
standard Debian tools, but then use more up to date packages. Sometimes
this is a case of pulling some of the Testing or Unstable packages in
instead of using raw Stable, sometimes completely new ones are created.
I believe this is one of the major bug bears with Ubuntu, and I don't
think many would recommend using the base Debian sources from a Ubuntu
install. I've no experience of DSL though, it may be simply a custom
install CD of Debian using the same sources, or their own reduced
snapshot of the Debian ones, rather than modifying anything much. It all
depends how far you stray from the original - not far and there seems
little point, too far and you've effectively got a new distribution that
will possibly end up going its own way much like Mandrake did from Red Hat.

You also have to remember that there are 3 primary flavours of Debian
(Stable, Testing and Unstable). Even within these you don't want to keep
switching, and this would be the same with any distribution - you will
end up with a difficult to manage selection of newer and older packages.
Not impossible to manage, but you may find a package having a dependency
that can only be satisfied by using the repository that you were
previously using and not the one you are now using.


(*) apart from a few bootable CDs, Knoppix proved less than successful
at booting on hardware than Morphix which does much better in my
experience - neither proved solid enough for me to rush out and get a
newer version when it came out, whereas the BBC I keep up to date with -
but then it does depend on what you want to use them for I guess!

-- 
Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/