[Wylug-help] Networking Linux PCs

[David Pashley]

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NB. I am almost a Debian Developer, so assume apropriate bias.

On Thursday 28 November 2002 8:26 pm, Frank Shute wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 12:09:24PM +0000, John Hodrien wrote:
> > On Wed, 27 Nov 2002, Frank Shute wrote:
> > > This has always been the perceived wisdom but I often wonder how true
> > > it is. I can't comment on Debian but having installed FreeBSD which I
> > > was assured was terrifying and strictly for wizards, I found it to be
> > > the easiest OS I had ever installed. It was really just a case of
> > > being able to read the instructions with the partitioning being the
> > > hardest bit (isn't it always when you dual boot?) although the
> > > installer offers a sensible default.
> >
> > Ah but there's different groups of people.  I started with slackware, and
> > coped but that certainly doesn't mean it was good.  Some people would
> > start there and throw it in the bin and never bother looking again.
>
> But Slack has always been considered a bit of a hackers system.
>
> > > I believe the FreeBSD installer is a bit minimalist much like Debian
> > > but doesn't minimalist mean there's less to foul up? :)
> >

Debian installer is not minimalist, it is fully featured.

> > The RedHat installer is hardly complex if you pick the newbie install,
> > and I'd suspect less complex than the BSD installer.
>
> The RedHat installer is more complicated than the FreeBSD installer &
> because it's got whizzy graphics and the like, it doesn't really make
> it any easier to use - newbie or otherwise.
>
> > Installing from a firewire CDROM onto a laptop with new graphics and
> > sound yet installing fine with no intervention is where I suspect
> > debian + BSD would suffer.
>
If you use the 6 floppies, shouldn't cause too much problems to get the CD
working in debian installer.

> Installing on my laptop which only had a PCMCIA CDROM was the same
> procedure with RedHat and FreeBSD - copy the CDROM to my Windows
> partition and go from there. Numerous (complicated) kernel recompiles
> with RedHat to get sound, PCMCIA and USB working, none required with
> default FreeBSD kernel although APM doesn't work so I require an
> (easy) recompile. Hideous amount of hacked options in linux kernel to
> get APM working on a Thinkpad.
>
> OK, I don't know how much of that is RedHats fault and how much of
> that I would have had with Debian for instance but I don't think
> Debian would have been any worse.
>
Debian installed pcmcia during setup and dumps it after install if it isn;t
needed. You get the option of loading additional modules during the install.
Useful if you have a floppy drive and a pcmcia CD.

> > > It doesn't have things like linuxconf but all my hardware was detected
> > > and I found it easy to configure/setup. I guess a newbie might not
> > > find it easy to setup but I don't know if they'd find things like
> > > linuxconf/yast much easier - certainly not in the long run IMO.
> >
> > But is your hardware that exotic?
>
> Not the workstation but RH failed to configure the ATAPI CDROM correctly
> and FreeBSD did. Linuxconf wouldn't have helped me with the problem
> but using a more stable system in the first place did - I didn't have
> the problem.
>
I won't go into linuxconf.

> What I'm really getting at is that a more thoroughly tested system
> than RH is easier but RH insist on putting out systems that contain a
> kernel which is hacked and hasn't had widespread use. Ditto their
> system tools. Ditto their hacked versions of Gnome and KDE....
>
> Compare and contrast the development process of a RedHat system and
> FreeBSD or Debian: A few people at RH hack around with kernel and the
> system and it receives a not very widespread release as beta then it's
> released. But FreeBSD is released as CURRENT (for the keen &
> developers), then STABLE (some bugs) and finally RELEASE (rock solid)
> and all along that process anybody can track whichever release they
> want or even track more than one. Debian does something similar.
>
Debian kernels do have a few patches, but not too much.

> Then compare and contrast apt or ports to RPM and they're in a
> different league. The administrative overhead is huge in comparison,
> something anybody, let alone a newbie, could well do without. RPM
> should be dumped - it's grossly antiquated, inadequate and generally
> hellish.
>
Please don't confuse dpkg with apt. There is little to choose between dpkg and
rpm, apart from rpm allows file dependancies. apt works well with both dpkg
and rpm as connectiva have shown. The advantages of Debian or the ports is
that there is a large number of packages/ports which are designed to work
together. In the case of Debian you have policy and lintian and linda to
check the packages with. Plus you have the public bug database and people
moaning if it doesn't work, so things get fixed to work pretty quickly. The
main problem with RPM based distros, is that you do not have the lagre number
of packages for each distribution, to you get lots of third party packages,
which may or may not work with your distribution and may or may not depend on
some random package that the developer had installed.


> > > Are there people on this list who have piled into Linux not knowing
> > > any unix with a distro like Debian and if so how have they got on?
> >
> > Got on far better once I switched to RedHat then to Mandrake.
> >
> > > Doesn't Debian have a pretty good manual/handbook if I remember
> > > rightly? I think there's also an O'Reilly book on Debian but I don't
> > > know if it's pitched towards the newbie.
> >
Sadly the ORA debian book is considerably out of date.

> > I've only ever really sunk me teeth into HOWTOs.
> >
> > > I suppose newbies might be put off by Debian as stable (or release?
> > > Can't remember) is always someway behind the latest kernel and
> > > utilities.
> >
> > Until recently, somewhat was putting it mildly.
>
> But it's stable and well tested which is preferable to something that
> is not IMO. BTW, is Debian release on 2.4 now or still 2.2?
>
Officially 2.2, but you can install 2.4.18 in woody and there are 2.4 install
disks which allow you to use ext3 or reiserfs partitions.

> > > But the stability of the release is what matters IMHO, otherwise you
> > > can spend hours figuring out all sorts of horrid problems, which you
> > > really don't want - especially if you're a newbie.
> >
Ask people who look after many servers and ask if they want to be upgrading
them every 4 months.

If you want up to date packages with debian then run testing, which is 2 weeks
behind unstable and only gets packages if they have been found to not have a
RC bug in them. Unstable is where all the action is at. testing is a little
bit calmer, but with most of the advantages.

> > I'm a RedHat 8.0 user at the moment, and I haven't found any bugs that
> > would seriously hamper a newbie.
>
> Crikey, they've finally got around to fixing backspace in termcap!
>

- --
David Pashley
david@davidpashley.com
Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione.
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