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Two Reviews of Debian 3.0
FrankNFurter writes "Debian Planet features a review of Debian 3.0 from a user's perspective. Time for a reality check, debianistas." And twstdr00t writes "Linuxwatch.org has posted their review of Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 Woody. 'The package managment system is nice and easy to use. But the lack of good configuration and installation takes that all away from Debian.'"
is that debian is NOT a desktop distribution. Even if the debian people would like to think that it is. The default configuration of "desktop software" is soo bad its just unusable.. Even Gentoo, which is even more hardcore than debian seems to be have a nicer default desktop setup.. And I never had on Gentoo the kind of problem that I have with debian...
But, I use debian on ALL of my servers. Debian on the server just rocks. Especially being able to upgrade it without ever going to the console.. Why do you have to reboot a RedHat system to upgrade it?? I never understood that.. Upgrading debian is a breeze...
I just don't think this guy is part of what you would call Debian's "target audience". Part of the reason I like Debian is that it doesn't make me go sorting through a huge list of video cards. I know that I need the nv driver and that I'll probably be quickly switching it to the nvidia driver once the system is up and running.
In fact, I have pre-written and tweaked XFree86 configuration files for each of my different machines available on one box via scp. There's no need to even ask me X questions in a system installer.
You may not have the option to install PHP from the setup menu, but I don't really care. I already know the name of the package to apt-get (not like the name isn't obvious) and I'd rather just type apt-get install php than go digging through potentially thousands of packages in a GUI list to find it. Hell, even if I didn't know it, I could fairly easily just apt-cache search php and find out.
On a different note, Java probably isn't readily available due to legal issues with Sun. FreeBSD is the same way, you have to manually fetch the necessary distribution file from java.sun.com. It's not like this is hard to do.
I'm not trying to troll or be a jerk. I like Debian because, as an experienced user, it gets out of my way most of the time and what it *does* do for me is truly useful. Its package system makes it extremely quick and easy for me to keep my systems up to date without burying me in a mountain of GUI widgets.
I respect the reviewers opinion, and don't necessarily have a problem with the review. I would, however, ask that he understand that there are tons of distributions out there right now. Some are geared towards people who don't want to get some dirt under their fingernails, and a precious few are geared towards those who either do or who have and are fully comfortable with it. Some of the former even have Debian underpinnings with a face he would be more happy with. Maybe there's not a problem with Debian, maybe it's just not for him.
Game... blouses.
Often when you do all things by hand you end up with a much better system than if everything is done automagically. Because only you know what you want its hard for someone else to do it for you. Usually you only configure an application once and since i dont install/uninstall apps all day (isnt fun anymore, i use my apps instead) the time spent tweaking files is very small once you get the system flying.
I think there exists space for all variations of linux dists and together they provide an excellent path for some people like me to walk on. Start off with a nice easy dist and as you grow you go towards Debian/Slack/Gentoo etc. One of the many reasons that i left windows was that i felt stuck, squeezed between MS and its developers. The same apply for very userfriendly dists too. I like the control and system-knowledge it gives me when i build my own system from scratch.
I really dont think we should push all dists towards user friendly. There are disadvantages with that too as it tends to empower n00bs at the expence of experienced users. More flawors is better as long as they all follow the Linux Standard Base.
HTTP/1.1 400
I've stuck with solely because of drakconf and it's associated tools, which make configuring a Linux system a breeze. However lately I've been aspiring to ascend to guru status, or at the very least PFY, so I gave Debian a whirl.
Here's a three step plan to help you become a guru. First, go to the mountian and climb it. Simply climbing it will help, but from the view on the mountian will make you wise. Second, spend time on the mountian. This will give you time to reflect on it and feel its moods, even modify it to suit your own tastes. Third, master the mountian. Once you have learned all it's quirks, you are encouraged to modify the mountian for the benifit of others. In time, you will learn that the simple text based install saves you much grief and hearache, though I would not compare it to the Red Hat install because I don't work on Red Hat much. Everything can be better.
Review #2, allas the same thing:
There are no automatic detection routines for your hardware, no automatic disk partitioning. It took us several attempts to get everything installed and working correctly.
There is X autodetect which has worked for me in the past. As for auto partition, no thanks. I like to set myself up myself, thank you, and the guidlines are where I learned that.
Strangely, this review was more unbiased than the first which proported to be so. It correctly noted that Debian's distribution system rocks. Dselect is a great tool that works for more than simple installs. Reading the insturctions that you MUST click out, you learn that simple vi style searches work! Awsome, type a partial name and your package is found. A graphical front end to this might be nice, but nothing is cooler than being able to secure shell into a box and configure it completely with a few keystrokes, without the overhead of pictures of boxes.
The short of it for me is that Debian easier to keep going once you have it up.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The biggest problem with reviews of distributions is that they are really reviews of installers. Debian's installer is quite usable, but it is not exactly pretty and streamlined.
But a Debian box only ever needs to be installed once. After that, apt-get update; apt-get upgrade will be all you need to do. Forever. Sure, there will be the occasional hiccup. But they are very very rare. With RedHat or Mandrake or SuSE you get to install de novo yearly. What fun !
So that is the largest point missed - the joy of MAINTAINING a Debian box once installed. The other thing distribution reviews always miss are the startup scripts, including hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly cron jobs. Here, again, Debian shines like a thoroughbred compared to the competition. It almost seems like it is created to make administering boxes easy for someone qualified to be an administrator.
I think that last sentence is probably most descriptive of Debian. It almost seems like it is created to make administering boxes easy for someone qualified to be an administrator. But a review written by someone not so qualified will miss out on many of the finer points that are the distros best attributes.
Debian is not for the faint of heart. As a long-time UNIX admin, I'm a big fan of having the fluff removed from the installation. I love FreeBSD for similar rasons.
I'm glad there's still a linux distribution that doesn't make all the decisions for me.
Isn't that why linux people hate microsoft?? Have we come full circle here and we need our hand held?
I understand a newbie wanting a GUI to get Linux up and going. But Debian has NEVER touted itself as the OS for such. It's for people who are serious about using Linux in production environments.
-- People who hate Windows use Linux. People who love UNIX use BSD.
Lots of views are expressed here, but as I just installed woody, I think many of you have missed some simply points:
I love the concept behind Debian. I want to have control over my system and over the TYPE of software I install. Debian will let me, but it punishes me for trying. I expect I'll be installing another distro shortly. I need to use my computer, not spend type getting it ready to be used.
Obligatory claim of competence: I started with slackware on floppies back in the 1.2 kernel days. I installed via floppies to bootstrap. I am not totally clueless.
Erskin
geek.
The problems of debian are obvious and easy to fix. The reason debian packages are old is because there are too many of them. There are thousands of packages in the debian system and there are very strict rules as to when they are declared to be stable. This means that no matter what package you install into a debian stable system you are guranteed all dependent packages are available and more importantly that package will never ever brak your system. This applies no matter what your CPU or architecture is.
The problem is that this is a herculean task and although debian does a decent job it's a futile task.
IMHO debian should do the following.
Trim down the list of "official" packages drastically. Take only the best 100 or so packages and concentrate on them exclusively. The rest of the packaged can be treated as "add on" and should be put on separate servers. The users can choose to add them to their apt.sources or not and if they do there are no guarantees.
This will allow the debian package mainters to concentrate on a drastically smaller list and make sure the bugs are cleared up rapidly.
War is necrophilia.