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The Importance of Being Debian
Orre writes "This is an interesting article on why we should be interested in this non-commercial linux distribution. Some of the points: No lies, Suit-Free Zone, Apt-get. And by the way, Hewlett-Packard has chosen Debian to be their standard linux distribution."
My /etc/apt/sources.list (extracts):
../project/experimental main contrib non-free
./ ./
# Gnome 2:
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian
# KDE 3:
deb http://kde3.geniussystems.net/debian/
deb http://people.debian.org/~bab/kde3
# E17:
deb http://people.debian.org/~ljlane/downloads e17/
'nuff said.
If you want the greatest and latest, you got it. Debian Developers are not necessarily using potato, they like features as much as anybody else. But Debian's "stable" stamp is something that has much more weight than that.
Besides, Debian has that annoying habit of usually doing the right thing. That's what the article is about, really.
-- don't discount flying pigs until you have good air defense
The maintainers of gcc pointed out that development branches of gcc are not intended for production purposes and that any software which is compiled with the forthcoming, stable version of gcc (gcc 3.0) would simply not run on Red Hat 7.
What the article omits is that Redhat were right, and the gcc developers were wrong. Sure, you couldn't run gcc 3.0 software on Redhat, but so what ? gcc 3.0 was a botched, DOA release, containing an embarrassing bug that prevented it from compiling KDE correctly, which is why it was "skipped" as a distribution compiler. Redhat havereleased an extended 7.x series waiting for an acceptable distribution compiler (gcc 3.1).
The gcc team are within their rights releasing something that isn't known to compile a package as important as gcc. Redhat, on the other hand, have to make sure that their distribution compiler can build hundreds of packages. In hindsight, it's very clear that Redhats move on gcc was the right one.
I've been using Debian for almost a year now, and I couldn't be happier. As for the article making it seem that you can't get the latest goodies from Debian, that may have been misleading.
The Debian team maintains 3 branches, Stable, Testing, and Unstable. While Stable uses Kernel 2.2 and XFree86 3, Testing gives you kernel 2.4.16, XFree86 4, and other, up-to-date goodies.
My only complaint about Debain is that the install can be painful, especially to those used to more graphical oriented tools. But the fact that you can burn a 30meg CD and do an install over the internet is very nice (netinst), and once you get used to apt-get, you'll wonder how you got by without it.
Non-commercial Linux distributions like Gentoo or Debian are impressive. They have more package than most commercial distros, they are actively maintainer, they have an amazing packaging system, they are free and everyone can put his finger in the pie.
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But *commercial* distros are really important. Why? Because companies like SuSE or RedHat have a marketing force. Without them, a lot of companies would never have heard about Linux. Just like a lot of other free operating systems, Linux would have been something designed by geeks, and for geeks. SuSE, RedHat, etc. give an important professional aspect to Linux. Thanks to them, some hardware vendors gave specs or developped Linux drivers. Thanks to them, web plugins like Flash are supported on Linux. Thanks to them and their money, Linux has been ported to Intel and AMD 64 bits architectures. Thanks to them, any dummy can buy a SuSE package with a comprehensive printed manual, everything on CD's and DVD's, and get technical support.
Sure, once you are familar with Unix/Linux, you can easily use any distro, commercial or not, or even switch to BSD. But I guess a lot of people would never have installed Linux/Unix on their computer if the only thing they was given was http://www.debian.org/ or http://www.openbsd.org/
So please stop bashing commercial Linux distributions. Linux would never have been what it is nowadays without them.
{{.sig}}
Apt-get makes upgrades/installations much easier.
I love it. But I was curious to see Ian Jackson, dpkg developer, say in this interview that he didn't think apt was so hot. Clearly Ian has a better perspective than I do. Can someone explain Ian's perspective? I don't really understand his objections very well.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!