Debian And The Rise of Linux

There's an article in this month's LinMagAu that asks a question about how the rise of Linux will impact Debian and what that could mean. Good article, especially interesting if you have been a fan of Debian.

Comments

I like the wording of that..

[SlowCoder]

"if you have been a fan of Debian"..

Not only "if", but also "been a fan", implying that most people aren't using Debian any more?

*ducks for cover*

Re:I like the wording of that..

[caffeinex36]

Well, not in a corporate environment I don't see it much.

Usually, if at all linux....its RH. :(

sad...but true...
-Rob

Re:I like the wording of that..

[CompWerks]

What's wrong with RH? It's made the most headway in developing a true alternative to M$. Anyway you cut it RH helps all linux distro's across the board.

Re:I like the wording of that..

[Malc]

"Debiam is three years out of date"

That's just tripe, and you know it. I have no idea why you got moderated up twice for spreading FUD. I use Mandrake and Debian at home, and Red Hat and Debian at work. Debian is pretty modern.

Re:I like the wording of that..

[kronsrepus]

The New Zealand Electoral Department is (apparently) moving all of their desktop machines nationwide to run Debian linux. Now if that goes ahead as planned, that'll be a HUGE victory for Debian.

This news coming just after the NZ Govt signed some huge Microsoft deal...

Re:I like the wording of that..

[Anonymous Coward]

> ... Debiam is three years out of date ...

If you consider the derivitives of Debian, such as Knoppix, you can't say that it is out of date. Knoppix has absolutely the easiest installation of any operating system out there (unless you want to go back to DOS ("format c: /S" was pretty easy).

Re:I like the wording of that..

[Anonymous Coward]

So, if a package is included in RedHat, it is ok to use. But if the the same package is in Debian unstable, it is not? Because it's more unstable?

Re:I like the wording of that..

[sqlrob]

Please explain the inclusion of GCC 2.96 in RH then.

Re:I like the wording of that..

[Gleef]

It depends on who makes the decision as to what to use in a corporate environment.

If English-speaking non-technical executives decide to pick a Linux distro, I'd say they overwhelmingly seem to choose Red Hat, since that's the one they're most likely to know / Dell's most likely to pre-install.

If technical staff is allowed to make the decision, Debian makes a much better showing. In my experience, over half of these installations are Debian, Red Hat being second most popular.

Re:I like the wording of that..

[Sentry21]

What's wrong with RH? It's made the most headway in developing a true alternative to M$.

I'm sorry, but when did the point of Linux become 'to destroy MS'? I always thought it was about making good software that people want to use, and sharing it with everyone so the people can benefit. Red Hat seems more interested in making a profit - and as a corporation, that is, in fact, the one thing they exist to do. I disapprove of this. It's like totalitarian communism - 'everyone helps everyone (to help me)'.

Redhat, as I've said before, is the MS of the Linux world. Which is not to say it's evil, but it certainly doesn't have the quality that Debian does, for one major reason: customers. Debian has users, Red Hat has customers. Red Hat has to provide new versions to its customers on a timetable. They can't afford to wait until things are finished, they have to get it out the door.

Debian, on the other hand, does not have that limitation. Debian releases happen when they're done, when they're ready to get burned onto a CD and downloaded by the ISO and dist-upgraded, and not a second before. Debian releases are done right, and the long release cycle is because they take the time to do it right the first time. THAT is what Linux and open-source should be about. Not doing it first, but doing it right.

Anyway you cut it RH helps all linux distro's across the board.

Not really, no. Red Hat has a horrible history of security holes, including (for example) keeping Wu-FTPd as the default FTP daemon, despite security hole after security hole, for over four years (or at least, four years of everyone criticizing them for being so stupid). They leave spades of ports open in the default installation, because someone might some day need them, instead of providing an option to turn them on later. They provide a packaging system that, at its best, is mediocre. They corporatize Linux, and make everyone feel as though they have to compete to be better. They made such a big deal about being the only Linux out there that corporations only support Red Hat - which severely hurts other Linux distros. Oracle, for example, is only supported on Red Hat. True, that's Oracle's fault, but Red Hat's boisterious success has marginalized distros that don't have overly commercial gains, and that hurts everyone across the board.

--Dan

Re:I like the wording of that..

[CompWerks]

I'm sorry, but when did the point of Linux become 'to destroy MS'?

First of all I never once said the word destroy - I simply said "alternative"

Red Hat seems more interested in making a profit - and as a corporation, that is, in fact, the one thing they exist to do.

Second of all, what's wrong with making a profit? It's refreshing to see that some major corporate enterprises moving to RH. As I said before it's overall a good thing for the Linux community - the more it get's used, the more it gets better, and the more it offers it's self as a viable alternative to the M$ empire (No matter what Distro you pick)

Also, let's not forget that the RH iso's are freely available for d/l, which is more then I can say for some of the other distro's. So I scratch my head trying to figure out why you would say that they "only" care about making a profit.

They are simply trying to make money by offering support services and some more robust solutions geared towards the corporate enterprise marketplace. If you don't need the support then don't pay for it and RH is as free as it can get.

Not really, no. Red Hat has a horrible history of security holes, including (for example) keeping Wu-FTPd as the default FTP daemon, despite security hole after security hole, for over four years (or at least, four years of everyone criticizing them for being so stupid).

Do you actually run Debian? It's great stuff but your living with blinders on if you think Debian hasn't had it's fair share of problems. Granted, they are mostly relegated to installed apps, but then so are RH's

Re:I like the wording of that..

[rnws]

And every ISP I have worked for (it's been a few, since 2.0 had just come out as I recall) has run Debian (and I got hired by the first one as the Windows geek.)

One of the reasons is one of the self-same reason that RedHat created the "server" variant of it's line - it moves more slowly than the mainstream version so you (in the commercial sense) know that it's not going to change tomorrow - it's something you can rely on (not to be different by 9am tomorrow.) IT pros *like* predictability and reliability (one of the reason's all that old mainframe code is still out there.)

I must say the thing that pisses me off the most is people who say the installation is hard - no, it's not. All I have ever done with Debian is just sit there, make some choices and tap the enter key (ok, type the hostname and such too ;-)
Many of my (newbie) friends have had the same experience, "I heard it was hard?" Just keep hitting enter. "Wow, that didn't hurt at all."

Where does this idea that it's hard come from? The fact that it's text-based? Well that certainly didn't hinder Microsoft from growing into a giant with things like MS-DOS and Windows 3.x or id Software with all of it's dos-based games, or Novell or any of the *nixes either.

Sure it can be a bitch when something is missed by the installer but so are all of them - and Debian can be a damn sight more interactive during install than some of the graphical routines out there (that want to treat you like a Mac or Windows user and hide the really useful, powerful bits from you.)

So yeah, maybe Debian is a slow, sure, wrinkly old tortise but dammit I need that kinda reliability in my business.

*sigh* Already slashdotted, article text:

[Anonymous Coward]

By mid 2004 at the latest Linux will be a serious contender on the average desktop. The downfall of Windows won't be imminent (that will take another couple of years at least) but Linux will begin to take a serious chunk of the market. Kids will be doing their homework with it, Moms and Pops will be doing Internet banking and sending email to Aunt Edna with it, secretaries will be drafting letters with it, accountants will be creating spreadsheets with it.

But will Debian be there?

We all know that Debian is technically one of the most advanced operating systems on the planet, but is it ready to ride the coming shockwave of the desktop Linux juggernaught?

And just as importantly, do we want it to?

Yes, I know the argument that says Debian is created for the benefit of the people who do the creating, and that we shouldn't care if anyone outside the core developer group uses it or not.

I think that argument is bunk.

I say we should want Debian to grow with Linux, because if it doesn't, it's doomed. Doomed to be marginalised in an increasingly Linux-aware market, and doomed to be eclipsed technically by development efforts focused on the high profile commercial distros.

This point was really driven home to me last week when on two consecutive days I was asked for instructions on setting up Apt-cacher under Red Hat. The requests came from people who manage networks of Red Hat boxes using Apt-rpm, and naturally they wanted to cache packages to save some bandwidth. Apt-rpm and Apt-cacher were exactly the solution they needed.

So a Debian initiative saved the day for some Red Hat users. Sweet.

But now the most frequently cited technical advantage of Debian is gone, assimilated by the highest profile commercial distro. Now when people are discussing switching to Linux, there is no longer the argument that Debian is worth the pain of the initial install and the lack of general vendor support in order to reap the benefit of the most advanced package management system in the world. Instead, users can just install Red Hat and still get the benefits of Apt.

Is there anything wrong with that? Absolutely not. It's the way things are meant to work in the Open Source world. Good ideas and good software get around, and a fundamental part of the Debian credo is that we don't restrict who can benefit from it, no matter what their application. That's a principle I firmly believe in.

And of course I'm glossing over the situation a bit here: I can imagine Debian developers all around the world jumping up and down and yelling that Debian is much more than a bunch of packages, or a technical specification for how to create them, or a tool to manage them. But I'm deliberately simplifying things because that's the way the average Joe User is going to see it: Oh, Red Hat has Apt now, cool. I'll use that instead of Debian.

Joe User doesn't know (or care) about the obsessive backporting of security patches to the stable release, or about the technical and social infrastructure and numerous supporting apps built up around Dpkg and Apt, or Debian's devotion to the purity of truly Open Source licences. As far as Joe User is concerned Redhat has Apt, and that's all there is to it. They don't know enough to make the finer distinctions.

Without distinguishing features like Apt, the argument for going with Debian is diminished. Sure, there are still arguments to be made, but they are less obvious. Here's an exercise for you: imagine you are standing at the water cooler chatting with workmates, and a non-technical colleague just said they are thinking of trying Linux at home and were going to install Red Hat but they heard Debian is really good, but has a tricky installer. They think they'll just try Red Hat because that's what they've heard of other people using, but are interested in your opinion because you're in computers. You've got exactly 15 seconds to succinctly explain why Debian may be better for them than Red Hat.

Re:*sigh* Already slashdotted, article text:

[Mr2cents]

I don't think Debian is going to collapse soon, But I do agree the installer could use some rethinking. Things I would like to see included: System recovery (using distributed backups over the lan), hardware autodetection, an installation blog - or something like that where you can put your installation remarks/choices, etc. Also, I'm looking for a command that would backup all config files that have been changed, or all files not managed by apt.

Also, if there were a central repository for those installation blogs, developers could easily see where most of the problems arise.. Just some random thoughts..

Re:*sigh* Already slashdotted, article text:

[Malc]

"he way the average Joe User is going to see it: Oh, Red Hat has Apt now, cool. I'll use that instead of Debian. "

Unfortunately, Jow User doesn't realise that it isn't Apt itself that makes Apt great. It's the effort that goes in to creating the packages correctly that Apt uses. Broken and poorly maintained packages will render Apt as useful as RPM.

Re:*sigh* Already slashdotted, article text:

[JanneM]

You are probably aware of this, but just to clear some misconceptions:

rpm deb

apt up2date Red Carpet

In other words, rpm (like deb) is a package format. Apt (like up2date, red carpet nad a number of others) is a system for downloading and installing packages, finding and solving dependencies between packages and so on.

Running apt on redhat still means using rpm - it's just that you use apt as the manager, instead of using the rpm tools directly to do stuff manually. As packages, rpm and deb are pretty much equal; rpm has gotten a bad rap in part because rpm based distros typically did not have a package manager earlier, and foremost, because there was no solid, single repository for them with people dedicated solely to find and fix inconsistencies and conflicts before pushing them out to users.

Re:*sigh* Already slashdotted, article text:

[Vitus Wagner]

Why care so much about Joe User?
Let RedHat, ALT Linux and other commercial firms
care about them. They would get their revenues
and give their contribution to OpenSource world,
including Debian.

Users switch to Debian not from Windows (or complete
computer illiteracy), but rather from other Linux
distro's.

Personally I switched to Debian from RH (four or five years
ago) when I found out, that when I need some piece
of software which is not included in my distro,
I routinely go to ftp.debian.org and grab orig.tar.gz from there.

There should be at least one distro in the world,
which cares about clever people, not stupid ones.

Debian perfectly fill that niche. It is created
by clever people and targetted to clever people.

With apt-get dist-upgrade who need installer
at all, once he learned how dump/restore work?
And for first time in the life you better
to call some more experiencd friend.

Re:*sigh* Already slashdotted, article text:

[lpret]

I agree. Let the nerds have their distro, let the business world have the main ones. *ducks*

Debian should not get into the "Joe User" mode, because it alienates the only people that use it. Let RedHat, Mandrake, and SuSe fight over Joe User. Just as long as it's linux.

Re:*sigh* Already slashdotted, article text:

[HiThere]

The problem with up2date is the server. You can only use the specified server, which is available on a subscription basis. You can't use anything else. (I'm sure this is realtively easy to solve, but that's the way it's released.)

RedCarpet updates leave you with a system which can't be upgraded with a later set of Red Hat CDs. This is no big deal if you keep /home, /usr/local, and any specialized directories on separate partitions. Not unless you do a lot of customizing of the system scripts. You can just do a reinstall instead of an upgrade. But it sure is a nuisance. (Also, when Red Carpet switched to the rcd [Red Carpet Daemon] I was never able to figure out what it was doing. *NOT* ideal. That was a beta, so I assume that they fixed this later. But I switched distributions and lost track.)

Re:*sigh* Already slashdotted, article text:

[Laxitive]

System recovery (using distributed backups over the lan), hardware autodetection, an installation blog

Yes, an installation blog is CRUCIAL. What's the point of installing debian if you can't blog it in excruciating detail right next to your much vaunted movie reviews, and internationally recognized kitten-jokes. Ok, sorry, I had to. -Laxitive

Re:*sigh* Already slashdotted, article text:

[ichimunki]

Jonathan Oxer is Founder and Technical Director of Internet Vision Technologies, an Australian web application development agency with clients around the world. He is also a Debian developer and cmdrtaco felcher, and was organiser of the Debian Mini-Conf in Perth in January 2003 in association with Linux Conf Australia where he presented one of the technical papers.

Moderators: if you're going to mod up a repost of an article, please make sure it has been reproduced faithfully. Really, do you people even read the posts you're moderating, or do you just look for keywords and then vote accordingly?

Re:*sigh* Already slashdotted, article text:

[Minna Kirai]

In other words, rpm (like deb) is a package format.

Not exactly. rpm is also a package installer program, like Debian's dpkg.

rpm : rpm : up2date
deb : dpkg : apt

A statement comparing "apt vs rpm" is valid, if both are interpreted as software applications.

In fact, that comparison was once very important for Debian evaneglism. Until recently (and maybe still?), rpm was the primary tool for RedHat users to install packages. Before the introduction of RedHat's up2date, comparing "The primary command-line tools to install packages on RedHat and Debian" meant comparing the user-friendliness of rpm and apt-get. Naturally, apt-get won completely, because its featureset is far out of rpm's league.

Linux reference system

[Dionysus]

I think for Linux to grow more, it needs a reference implementation so that developers and users know that something will work for sure.

I think Debian GNU/Linux should be this system for several reasons.
It's non-commercial, meaning SuSe can't complain that the reference system is partial to RedHat or anyone else.
It's conservative, which is very important for reference systems. If you write for Debian 3.0, you know it will be around for awhile. This doesn't mean that RedHat can't extend their distribution to add more recent libraries or programs. It just mean that something written for Debian 3.0 will work in the RedHat system that says it follows 3.0.

Re:Linux reference system

[IamTheRealMike]

There already is such a system in the form of the LSB.

The main problems with using Debian as a reference distro are:

a) Not as popular as some other distros (which is not btw just because the clueless masses are stupid, give people some credit).

b) They don't have any real problem breaking binary compat with other distros, see their decision over the libdb mess.

c) The LSB already does it, and is widely accepted, has test cases etc.

Re:Linux reference system

[__past__]

However, Red Hat is the de facto standard

Only in some parts of the world. If you want your package to be used by all these german gouvernment departments switching to Linux now, you should better make sure that it works on SuSE, scince that is pretty much the default distro here. As fas as I understand, it is similar with TurboLinux and Connectiva in their respective markets, so testing for UnitedLinux compatibility right from the start would seem like a good idea if you don't want to piss of people in some of the biggest markets for Linux software.

Re:Linux reference system

[ntrfug]

That idea is unfortunately Dead On Arrival.

The rationale for a reference implentation of Linux was facilitating commercial adoption. The Linux Standard Base, under the influence of commercial interests, elected to specify a package management standard, and the standard adopted was RPM.

I suspected at the time (and I still do) that the reason for this decision was to ensure that Debian (the only major NON-COMMERCIAL distribution) would never become dominant -- it can never be LSB-compliant since it doesn't use RPM packaging.

Re:Linux reference system

[chill]

Debian as a reference platform? Sure, as soon as they get rid of .deb and start using .rpm packages. RedHat, RedFlag, SuSE, Mandrake use RPM, which constitutes the vast majority of non-uber-geek installs.

That'll probably be about the time Steve Ballmer gets praised for his dancing abilities and Bill Gates extolls the virtues of the GPL -- with a straight face.

Hint: "monkey boy" isn't considered praise.

Re:Linux reference system

[lerouxb]

I think gentoo can more easily become the reference implementation. Thats because things are closest to how the individual developers intended them. No redhat/mandrake/debian branding, backports or modified packages.

Besides - apt is old. portage is a new and innovative system. Yes - Gentoo is currently a source-based distro, but they are moving to a reference platform and it is possible to use pre-compiled binary packages.

Many gentoo users are ex-debian users. It might not be as stable as debian stable, but it is more stable than mandrake, redhat and debian unstable. (and more up to date as well)

Re:Linux reference system

[BrokenHalo]

I have no beef with Gentoo (I use Slackware) but it sems to me that RedHat appears to have a de facto grip on any claim to be a reference system, simply by virtue of its popularity. And yes, some people do manage to get a RedHat or Mandrake system to run stable, though I never did.

Yeah watch out

[Yuioup]

I totally agree with the article. How many times have we seen technically superior technology being totally ignored and people going for 'popular' technology. Remember, the PC itself wasn't a technically superior machine. The intel processors weren't the best at the time, but everybody started buying PC's because they all wanted to play Leasure Suit Larry on it (.. and use Wordperfect).

So Debian should be more of a VHS than a Betamax if it wants to stand a chance...

Yuioup

Re:Yeah watch out

[wwwillem]

So Debian should be more of a VHS than a Betamax if it wants to stand a chance...

[off-topic]
Yeah, I worked for Philips with their technically also superior V2000 system. The story goes that that never made it, because the "family owned" company didn't "encourage" the release of V2000 P0RN movies :-).

[on-topic]
I'm myself pretty happy with using RH in the office and Debian for hacking around at home. Good article, but Joe Doe will never know about apt, because they don't know already about rpm. Stuff like Walmart/Lindows is the answer there. But let's not forget: Commodore 64 is a thing of the past, but Apple is still around, so "the masses" don't always win.

[???-topic]
So maybe Debian P0RN is the answer to the improved "usability and visibility" in the article :-) The new future for APT-Get-Unstable ....

Re:Yeah watch out

[Delphiki]

Is Debian really technically superior? After I had been using Linux for a while and had gotten the hang of installing things via RPM, portage, tarballs, etc, and editing config files, et all, I tried Debian. I hated it. If Debian had been the first Linux distribution I had ever used I would have returned to Windows and not looked back. Apt is better than RPM in some ways, but I still found it extremely awkward after having worked with portage.

But what bugs me most is the attitude Debian users seem to have, which is an air of ridiculous elitism. Of course this isn't true of all Debian users, but at least the most vocal ones I've seen. After having used Debian I can't say that I can see what that elitism is based on.

Anyway, I'm not trying to troll, just suggesting that maybe if Debian fades away, it's not the fault of people who don't look for the highest quality solution as much as the fault of them getting out of touch and too high in their ivory tower.

Although I use and dearly love Debian

[James_Duncan8181]

I can see that it is clearly not disgned to have that much polish in GUI areas. Debian has been and will (IMHO) continue to be primarily designed for the technical user/Debian Developer, as these are the guys making the design choices. No walkthroughs, no neat GUI config a la Mangrake, not that much focus on usability as the assumption is that almost all users will be technically proficient.

This is a self-fullfilling prophecy, and to change this will take quite a major change from the existing Debian (fairly elitist) culture.

Where Debian will shine is not nessicarily as a mainstream distro itself, but as the basis of systems that are more widely used, such as Xandros and Knoppix. Is this a bad thing?

It does run the risk that Debian-as-distro/brand become marginalised, but all that needs to happen for the Debian project to stay healthy is that Debian-as-underlying-system is widespread.

This said, my Ideal World(tm) is every man and his dog running Deb... ;)

Re:Although I use and dearly love Debian

[Dunkirk]

I'm as critical of Debian as anyone, probably because I really, really like their philosophy. Unfortunately, their philosophy causes them to be about 2 years behind the current average Linux distro. On the other hand, Debian stays this far behind because all the work done to the distro must work across, what?, about 9 different architectures. (Maybe it was 11?) This includes the installer. I've given Debian a whirl, but I haven't made the jump yet. However, there's a chance that I might get a dozen old HP and Sun workstations that are collecting dust at my company, and the thought of being able to run the same Linux distro across both platforms really, really intrigues me. Debian on x86? Well, if you really want to, I guess. But Debian on non-x86? Hands down. "Real" Unix machines that can find their way into hobbyists hands won't be bleeding edge, and Debian's lag will actually be a huge asset to someone wanting to outfit such a machine.

Re:Although I use and dearly love Debian

[Sinistar2k]

When reformatting an old HP Omnibook 2000 (P-133, 1.3gig HD, no CD-Rom), I decided to give Debian (woody) a go because it had the cleanest, purest install I could find without going the route of Gentoo.

Three weeks later, I finally had it working properly.

My first stumblings were because of the installer not liking my PCMCIA card. A purchase of a new card fixed that. But then I got to the package installer and wow... it was one of the most unusable things I had ever encountered. Just when I thought I was getting the hang of it, I would press Enter one too many times and the install would take off before I had even gotten through all the options.

Once I decided to just abandon that and do a base install / apt-get what I need setup, things went better, but then every time I did a startx, my system would lock hard. I worked on that one a long time before breaking down and just installing the 2.4.18 kernel package. Problem solved, but it took a long time for me to get to that point (and a test install of Red Hat had X11 coming up properly the first time).

Then I got blackbox and fluxbox installed to try out some lightweight but functional window managers. Worked great until I ran XDM, which would then vomit all over itself. Finally figured out where in the XSM configuration I needed to make changes. Got that running well.

Fortunately, I didn't need sound, serial, or parallel working on this laptop for the task for which I intended it, otherwise I might have been scratching my balding head even more.

All that said, it's running now. Apt-get is an absolute dream (a package manager that takes care of dependencies for me? Sweet joy!). But my difficulty in getting basic things done was enough that I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Had the laptop been a bit beefier, I would have given up after day three and gone straight to Red Hat.

So, at this point, I'm enjoying my Debian install, but I wouldn't ever do it again with a system that I considered critical or that had to be up and running quickly.

What debian should do

[ultrabot]

Debian should release a stable SERVER subsystem, then build a rapidly improving desktop subsystem that remains compatible with the *stable* server subsystem. Kinda like the UnitedLinux idea, which isn't all that bad. People can tolerate when their desktop apps crash every now and again if their server side is rock solid, as we have come to expect from debian Stable. That server subsystem could also be a basis for various Debian derivatives, commercial and non-commercial.

An example release could be "Debian 4.2, based on Debian_base_3.4"

My biggest compliant with debian

[Anonymous Coward]

is the slow release cycle. I'd like to be able to pin the newest KDE/gnome/whatever to stable and do an apt-get upgrade without breaking a million things. Last time I pinned kde 3.1 and updated I spent three days finding broken stuff and fixing it.

And yes, I am aware of the other debian-based distros that are more up to date, but they're all (to my knowledge) pay distros, and I am looking for something cheap/free.

Re:My biggest compliant with debian

[KjetilK]

I agree on most of your points.

I'm a Debian user, not a developer, and I chose Debian for two main reasons: I like to understand what goes on, and many distros try to hide things from me to be "friendly". I don't have anything against RTFM, at least to a great extent. The other reason is that it is the most free distro around. Additionally, I had many good friends using Debian, always somebody I can call up.

However, I'm not capable of packaging anything myself, and I'm not a hacker. I'm a newbie. Things are hard, even after RTFMing...

Woody is allready terribly outdated, security packages like snort and nessus are pretty much useless. Then, KDE 3 is a whole lot more stable in my experience than KDE 2.2.2 which is in Woody. SpamAssasin must be kept up-to-date in the arms race with spammers. Exim is so old, people on the Exim-lists can't help you because they don't remember how Exim 3 was configured...

There are many who cries for an easier install, but I don't. It wasn't that hard, even for a newbie like me. Just had to call up my friends a few times. Debian folks are very helpful.

It seems like Sarge is following pretty much the same path as Woody did, released when really big things has been done. What I would like to see is Sarge being just an updated Woody. No new installer, no new groundbreaking stuff, just updated packages, Snort, Exim 4, Apache 2.0, KDE 3.1, GNOME 2.0, etc. Up-to-date, tested and out the door...

That's what I would like to see, but I realize there is very little I can do to help it happen.

Re:My biggest compliant with debian

[po8]

If you know what you want, you can run stable plus a few packages from unstable. It's a total and unecessary pain to set up, and then works like a charm forever ("the Debian Way"). Edit your /etc/apt/preferences file to have

Package: *
Pin: release a=stable
Pin-Priority: 500

Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 495

Now you can say apt-get -t unstable install foo and the foo package will be installed from unstable and will be maintained. Have fun!

Re:My biggest compliant with debian

[edbarrett]

Look here, about halfway down the page for the line to add to your sources.list to install KDE 3.1.2 for Debian stable.

Debian has the problem the whole Linux world has..

[Anonymous Coward]

... to much people around comming from Windows.

Debian was always about doing "The Right thing", about not only making things work, but make them work like they should work.

But you cannot build a good distribution on software getting worse and worse. Think about more and more software unable to do basic things, because people did not thought about them as they are not feasable with one human before one computer. Because people grew up with windows and do not even know how it could work.

On good example is konqueror and its identification of file type through filename's suffix. Do you have time to tell 300 users of your computers to rename "download.htm" to "bild.gif" to be able to click on it. (Oh, sorry I forgot, you are using your computer alone...)

Even Debian, which was formerly known to be usable by admins, is now working on abolishing its old working menu system to one build up on KDE's
menus. (Instead that someone would finaly get a menu-method for KDE and the old one.)
It's a shame, the old system capable of creating a menu looking the same under all window-managers (except KDE, because the KDE people do not want to integrate) making life for an admin really easy, is dropped for a thing not nearly capable of it.
(No possibility to specify a menu-hirachy. And the proposed format for icons is png. absurd.)

On the subject of Debian

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

WARNING : THIS IS NOT A FLAMEBAIT. I LOVE DEBIAN, BUT READ ON ...

I started using Linux with SlackWare when it was the only distro available out there. I used to love them tarballs, but then at the time systems still had manageable sizes, so one really could compile everything in a reasonable time.

Then I had the (mis?)fortune of being hired by a certain Caldera spinoff and was forced to use OpenLinux 1.2. That was my first contact with RPM, and that was a painful contact. Part of my work also involved writing and maintaining specfiles for various cross-platform packages. That's when I learned that (1) RPM was better than tarballs because it had dependencies, (2) RPM dependencies are not powerful enough and (3) RPM isn't backward-compatible. In short, RPM is not good but it's better than nothing.

At that company, I also had the misfortune of meeting a Debian fanatic. Note that I say he's a fanatic of Debian, not that Debian made him a fanatic. Having tried Debian long ago myself, when it wasn't ready for prime-time, and having found it complicated and messy at the time, I was conforted in this idea by the truly detestable way this guy was patronizing everybody who didn't use Debian, and was turned off Debian for another 2 years.

Then, several months ago, it was a sunday afternoon, my local computer shop was closed, and I couldn't find my RH CD to reinstall my box. I though : what the hell, I'm no more stupid than the average Debian user and I have nothing to do, let's try the Debian network-install. Well, I went through a little pain (it's not quite totally polished yet), but I've never looked back. dpkg and apt-get are just a godsend, and I too am now a convert today.

Moral of the story : I avoided using Debian for several years entirely due to the advocacy of one (well, several actually) Debian bigot. You can always say that I should have been more intelligent and I should have made my own opinion, but I never had time and the experience you get from other users do count for me.

In conclusion : what's the biggest good that could happen to Debian ? that other distros' package management got better so Debian bigots wouldn't have such an powerful incentive to behave like asses and disgust other people of Debian before they even try it. Or better still, that the Debian bigots start realizing that they won't win anybody to Debian by being patronizing.

Re:On the subject of Debian

[qtp]

Every distro has it's fanatics, hell, I've run into several RedHat bigots myself. It does make advocacy more difficult when the water has been tainted by people who use thier OS choice as a political statement or use advocacy as an outlet for thier personal axe grinding.

Debian's choice to be all DFSG distro is actually the only practical choice for a non-comercial org producing an OS. The battles in the past over the Troll Tech license had more to do with avoiding future troubles that a vaguely worded or confusing license could produce.

When an org has limited rescources, no comercial structure, and consists entirely of volunteers with no binding contract, then it makes sense to adhere to a very strict only Free Software position.

I want my 5 minutes back!

[Reservoir Penguin]

What could possibly be a reason for writing such an amzingly content-free article? Either the author is completely bored out of his mind or its what we call in Russia "black PR", could it be coming from Redhat that he seems to be whoring in the "article"? RedHat has apt now Debian is dead? WTF? Does Redhta also provide over 4K packages in stable testing and unstable forms? Or is it just a measely freshrpms depository that is only useful for upgrading standard packages that come with Redhat? Debian will contunue to be used by people who value Freedom and stability based release schedules over push the latest buggiest crap now preferebly couple with unresonblu upping the version number.

Re:I want my 5 minutes back!

[Reservoir Penguin]

Actually he wrote a 500 line article how Debian used to be great but now is dying because there is atp4rpm.

Oh Dear God No

[Saint Stephen]

Why I like Debian:

(1) Serious philosophical principles. The only people to say GNU/Linux with a straight face. People concerned with my liberty above all else.

(2) No Prepackaged Experience. I run Fluxbox, Gnome-Terminal, Mozilla, and Konqueror, and have a proper GTK/KDE library environment. It all works the way I want it.

(3) The system state is transactional. Glitz is antithetical to transactionality. Glitz hides transactions. I like transactions.

(4) No waiting forever to compile stuff pointlessly.

#1 is the crucial element. Liberty is paramount.

Re:Oh Dear God No

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

What i dont like about debian:

-Only good for servers

Upgrade your MDA video card, you'll see it's pretty good at being a desktop box. Where the hell did you get that ?

-Stable: old

Possibly, but it's stable. That's the main reason to use it. Caldera OpenLinux, which was supposed to be robust as a primary goal, also had outdated but well-tested packages (before Caldera let it grow too old it was useless to everybody).

-Unstable:looking for trouble, and still old

No and no. I use unstable with no problem at all, and I don't find it very out of date. Some things are, but most of the packages are fairly current.

-Licensing issues, cool apps missing

That's partially true. But you can always add non-free sources in your /etc/apt/sources.list. And you can always compile the tarballs if you really need to.

-No xfree 4.3, no mplayer

No mplayer ? hello ?

ppc@akula:~$ apt-cache search mplayer
mplayer-mozilla - Embedded video player for mozilla
mencoder-386 - MPlayer's Movie Encoder
acidrip - ripping and encoding DVD tool using mplayer and mencoder
mencoder-686 - MPlayer's Movie Encoder
mplayer-k6 - The Ultimate Movie Player For Linux
mplayer-doc - Documentation for mplayer
mplayer-fonts - Fonts for mplayer
kplayer - A KDE media player based on MPlayer
mencoder-k6 - MPlayer's Movie Encoder
lumiere - A GNOME frontend to mplayer
mplayer-386 - The Ultimate Movie Player For Linux
mplayer-686 - The Ultimate Movie Player For Linux


-Unfriendly community

Unfortunately, that's true, at least partially.

-Everyone now has apt or an improved version of it
-Installer sucks
-Dselect sucks

dselect and installer do suck, yes. But it's worth the pain IMHO.

Re:Oh Dear God No

[Zigg]

No mplayer ? hello ?

Just to nitpick, I think you got those from Christian Marillat's apt source; they're not in Debian proper.

dselect and installer do suck, yes. But it's worth the pain IMHO.

dselect sucks and is not worth the pain. aptitude, on the other hand, is Very Good. (Incidentally, I wonder if on Red Hat + APT, I can browse packages like I do with aptitude's UI...)

Article somewhat optimistic...

[Anonymous Coward]

"By mid 2004 at the latest Linux will be a serious contender on the average desktop. The downfall of Windows won't be imminent (that will take another couple of years at least) but Linux will begin to take a serious chunk of the market. Kids will be doing their homework with it, Moms and Pops will be doing Internet banking and sending email to Aunt Edna with it, secretaries will be drafting letters with it, accountants will be creating spreadsheets with it."

Would you like to bet some money on that?

"But will Debian be there?

We all know that Debian is technically one of the most advanced operating systems on the planet, but is it ready to ride the coming shockwave of the desktop Linux juggernaught?"

The desktop linux juggernaught? Oh, you mean Gnome. Or do you mean KDE? I know, you mean X, everyone's *favorite* GUI.

The linux desktop is an absolute mess. The article's claim that windows will be dead by mid-2006 is ridiculous. MS has too much money, too much monopoly, and too much inovative stuff just around the bend (read: Longhorn will take advantage of the technology MS developped through the complicated research process of using Mac OSX a lot) to keel over that easily. What's the point of an article if its assumptions are super-optimistic trash?

what about platform independence?

[martin-boundary]

So the guy wrote about apt, and how it's been adapted to run on other distros, but he didn't at all mention one strength which is unparalleled by any other distro: platform independence. Debian runs on what, ten different architectures (from memory, too lazy to look it up). No other operating system in the world runs on more hardware than Debian. That's extremely sellable to large companies.

Re:what about platform independence?

[martin]

umm NetBSD....a few more than Debian..

http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/

Segments

[rf0]

IHMO I really feel that Debian is aimed at the server and techincal user market and not the sort of people who run windows. Debian is very very powerful but not that intuative. For example to setup networking you have to /etc/network/interfaces. In RH you click on the pretty networking panel.

However as mentioned in that article apt-get is a saviour. Security problem on RH. Download RPM, check deps, install. Fix broken config

Debian: apt-get update && apt-get install

Walk away

Just MHO

Rus

debian in a redhat shop

[Soothh]

The company i work for uses a good deal of redhat for workstations and high end servers. Even our NT admin converted to redhat and uses vmware for when he needs to run NT. I personally now run debian at work, and am trying to get them to change to deb.
After using redhat for many months here, then changing to debian, ill never go back to RH. It can be a pain to get installed, but once there, its solid. where as on redhat I had lots of dep issues because I was always installing cutting edge crap. I have done the same on debian, but with alot less issues. With in a few weeks ill have the chance to change over our DNS server to debian. And onward from there...

Good way to try Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

For those turned off or scared away by the debian install process (which still seems stuck in the 90's. Jesus, did I just say that?), grab a Knoppix CD.

No, seriously. I don't run debian primarily because I don't want to go through the install process. I don't know what chipset my nic has, and I really don't care to know, know what I mean? Ditto with everything else.

I've been using flavors of RedHat, culminating with Redhat9 that's currently my Linux of "choice", mainly because Redhat offered superior hardware detection/setup. But, I've always had to tweak a bit here and there to get it working nicely.

However, with the advent of Knoppix, I think that's about to change. I popped in Knoppix 3.2 today for the first time to see what it was all about. The hardware detection on this LIVE CD is absolutely.. superb. It recognized and setup my Orinoco Wireless card. It found and mounted my Sony Cybershot Camera. Jesus, it even found and setup my Wacom! The only thing it didn't do was give me dual-head support OOB, but I don't think I know any distro that does that. But that's okay, fortunately I know how to set that up myself. It comes with KDE, it looks great, it just WORKS. And because it "just works" I'm really tempted to wipe RedHat off and do the HD install of this.

Some notes that I've come across, though: As Knoppix uses a special blend of testing/unstable (or something like that), it's really hard to do dist-upgrade and what not without downgrading your desktop. I heartily recommend reading through the docs at the Knoppix website and finding out what issues may remain. As a desktop Debian based distro, though, I think Knoppix just plain rules.

So what?

[rknop]

If Linux gets a lot bigger, but Debian doesn't get bigger with it-- so what?

The Debian developers seem to be happy to work on Debian for their own use and for the use of the people who use it now. As long as that audience doesn't shrink too much-- and I doubt it will, for though many slashdot posters love to scoff at this, there are some people who use Debian for philosophical and other reasons-- then the same number of people will continue to use Debian.

Yeah, I agree that Debian needs to move forward and needs to make sure it stays as close to the "cutting edge" as possible. But I don't understand why other Linux distributions exploding into extreme popularity among people not currently using Linux at all must detract from Debian. That sort of "must be the market leader to survive" mentality may work for commerical entities (be they open or closed source companies), but Debian isn't one such beast.

Indeed, I suspect what will happen is that the "mainstream" distros will become more attached to proprietary offerings. Red Hat's made amazing contributions to the open source community, but if their users are demanding crossover office sorts of things bundled with Microsoft Office, and M$ agrees to licence that, I'd be surprised if Red Hat didn't go for it. There will be those who will stick with Debian for philosophical reasons-- and so long as there are enough of them to provide a core of Debian maintainers, why not? It doesn't hurt anybody else.

That's the great thing about free software. Anybody who wants to do their own thing can do their own thing, without being beholden to what somebody else is doing, and without requiring anybody else to be beholden to them.

-Rob

up2date vs apt

[mapnjd]

The author raises many valid points, but it should be noted that not many Red Hat users could give a stuff about 'apt'.

Red Hat Linux comes with one free basic RHN/up2date licence. For enterprise customers (like us) 'RHN Enterprise' with central package management, server grouping etc. is a fantastic product and superior to using apt.

Obsessing with apt and the (internal) superiority of dpkg is typical of the Debian bigot. Those of us in the real world have more important fish to fry.

Re:up2date vs apt

[Alkarismi]

There are a few of us who also operate in the 'real world' who may not quite share your view ;)

I am by no means a Debian 'bigot', I don't us it as my personal desktop for instance, but I strongly assert it has a place, not least in the enterprise, an area we're no slouches in ourselves 8^)

I'm glad you like using Red Hat. I find your experience of the superiority of up2date over apt interesting, but not really backed up by my own experience.

In my experience, 'enterprise customers' are more least as likely to go the Debian route, of course, ymmv but it is in no way as cut and dried as you seem to assert.

Quit drooling over apt-get

[DaStoned]

APT is a tool, not an idol so quit the crap. Being a very useful tool indeed it should be, has been and will be ported everywhere it is needed. Go ahead, port it to Apple, the users will only benefit from it.

Calling APT the main and only advantage of Debian is plain ignorance.

Debian's strength lies in maturity which results from well-defined development policies, experienced & dedicated developers and large quantities of common sense :)

Apart from raving over APT for the first 1/3 of it's length, the article is, of course, right. Average Joe cannot tackle Debian.

Still, I wouldn't worry so much. The server market is huge. Debian simply kicks ass there.

Debian safe whilst it sticks to its heritage!

[Alkarismi]

Debian is not only the distribution of choice for the technically savvy, it is in most cases the best choice for deployment in Business.

The inevitable rise of GNU/Linux is one thing, Debian's place in the world is another. The two are not connected!

We deploy GNU/Linux and Free Software, every day, in an Enterprise setting. The opinion-du-jour on 'Linux on the Desktop' has almost nothing to do with distribution selection for any particular business. To the extent that Debian sticks to its long tradition of quality, stability, security and attention to detail it will remain right at the top of the shortlist (certainly for us at the very least).

Any increase in GNU/Linux usage is good for the community. Home users will be swayed by what they have always been swayed by - ease of use, getting their stuff done, and eye-candy. Decisions on Distributions used in business will continue to be made using a differenct set of criteria.

APT is NOT the "big advantage" of Debian

[WanderingGhost]

Well, it's sad that people say that now that apt has been ported to other distributions, Debian has no advantages anymore. The development process in Debian is the real advantage, with some nice consequences:

• Eleven hardware architectures supported.
• Support for other kernels (Hurd and BSD) is almost there (experimental versions do work already).
• A solid and intelligent policy, which will yield uniformness among packages, their directories and configuration files, etc, besides other nice things.
• An excellent bug-tracking system.
• More software than any other Linux distribution.
• Respect for upstream software (like, Debian doesn't call Apache "httpd", they call it "apache").
• Usually, there are scripts to automate everything: compare kernel compilation in RedHat to kernel compilation in Debian, for example.
• Stability. Debian is famous for not releasing buggy software, no matter how long it takes to release.
• Respect for suggestions and request from users: Debian will listen to users (via the bug tracking system), and if what you say makes sense, it will be included. No marketing department will filter anything.

Well, ther are other advantages, but these are the ones I remember now. By the way, I've been using APT for Conectiva, and I can tell you it's really not as good as the original (lacks stability, and is slower).

Re:APT is NOT the "big advantage" of Debian

[WanderingGhost]

Oh. I forgot: upgrade between major versions, without the need to reinstall. You can upgrade a server from 2.x to 3.0 with APT.

In the Tradition of Greenspun's Tenth

[Adam Warner]

``Any sufficiently complicated software distribution contains an ad hoc, informally specified bug-ridden implementation of half of Debian GNU/Linux.''

Knoppix

[kronsrepus]

A couple of other people mentioned Knoppix as the wonderful work of Debian, with better usability.

Knoppix has a wonderful hardware detection wizard, a simple script to install to the hard drive, and is also mentioned in the same edition of LinMagAu, surprisingly the writer didn't include a reference to it.

Personally I'm starting to hand friends a copy of Knoppix, if they like it I'll point them to the hdd install script.

Debian is a great base for Knoppix, and once a user becomes competent they can take advantage of the underlying Debian power - but they dont need a geek on hand to get started.

debian is not just apt and a philosophy

[bazongis]

Here is why I am likely to stick to debian in the foreseeable future:

• it's not because of the philosophy (I love the philosophy, but it wouldn't keep me from switching to a better distro if that makes my life in front of the computer better)
• it's not just because of apt
• it's because the packages have an extremely high quality, and because of a long term hassle-free upgrade procedure

Let me explain this in a bit more detail:

I started using debian roughly 4 years ago, after having tried various other distributions for different amounts of time (admittedly I was a complete clueless newbie then and had only limited abilites to stray too far from the default install).

Since then I have been running exactly the same debian installation.

I have started with stable, then went to testing, then went to unstable. In this time, I've upgraded my cpu and mobo twice, replaced various hardware, and have upgraded my desktop environment through various fairly incompatible KDE versions, and painlessly went through the c++ ABI changes.

And all I've done in all that time is simply 'apt-get upgrade' or 'apt-get dist-upgrade'. Nothing else.

The package quality of debian packages is usually extremely high, and most package maintainers go to great lengths to make complicated upgrade procedures virtually invisible. And it works.

In the mean time, I have seen many of my friends repeatedly re-install their linux system from scratch, because upgrading simply didn't work out quite as expected. And I felt reminded of those good old windows times, where you just re-installed your system every half a year or so.

I don't want that. I want to install my system and keep it up-to-date and want to never have to re-install it (unless the box was compromised of course).

That's why I love debian, because it makes the daily package-juggling and -upgrading easy, and thus improves my quality-of-life-in-front-of-the-box considerably.

I can't say I'm up-to-date with other distributions any more, and I've got nothing against other distributions at all. I am fairly sure the installation procedure of most other distros is far superior to the current debian installer, and probably many have more user-friendly configuration tools as well.

I just watch all my friends doing things I don't want to do. And that makes me a happy debian user.

And for the same reason I would immediately decide for debian when it comes to setting up a linux box at work (partly of course because I know he system better).

Anyway, thanks for reading :-)

Re:debian is not just apt and a philosophy

[Zigg]

You're trying to be clever, I know, but you're failing miserably. The grandparent's point was that his system has smoothly upgraded without needing to be reinstalled throughout those four years.

I have the same experience with my laptop.

Screw average Joe

[1gor]

I'm sick of this argument: "Average Joe doesn't care... It's too difficult for average Joe... The product has no future... Let's make the product easier for the brain-dead and dumb it down".

For the record, there exist such thing as market niches and they can be lucrative enough. Not everything should be mass-produced. Maybe millions of average Joes do not care about single vendor and forced upgrade risk. Let RH make money servicing them. There will be a limited number of sophisticated and influential users who will always need (and support) Debian.

Re:Screw average Joe

[DescData]

This attitude is a dead end. I compare what is happening to Linux distributions to what happened to Personal computer in the 80's. There were advocates for several platform, (my closet computer is Atari Falcon), but over time they all moved on. Why?

Being involved with computers is only interesting contributes to something that grows. A growing user base is the sign that you got it right. It's like the audience of a standup comic. When the average guy leaves for something else, your project has truly died.

Debian does not have to die. It just needs to reorient it's self. It needs to become the best at listening, and making everyone a contributer in some way.

11 minutes, and already slashdotted

[xdroop]

...pretty amazing.

More to the point: Debian is already marginalized to a certain extent. In the semiconductor industry, if a simulation or regression tool runs on linux, it runs on RedHat linux. A specific version of RedHat linux.

It is one of the first questions that technical support will ask: what version of linux is the tool running on? And if you answer incorrectly, you get a free trip to the sorry but that is not a supported configuration hang up. I am responsible for about a hundred linux boxes and none of them are Debian, for precisely this reason.

The real question is: so what? If the Debian developers are really as keen as everyone says they are, then it really doesn't matter -- they will keep coming up with technical innovations which will get tried, proven, and then absorbed into "more popular" distributions. Let Debian users be on the cutting edge, while those of us with real work to do can use the distilled and canned solutions to get on with our lives.

Niche markets have their place too.

[wadiwood]

Just because Debian is for a niche market doesn't mean it has to die if it doesn't go after the mainstream we-don't-care-how-it-works market. "Turn-key" solutions are not for everyone.

My current favourite magazine has several debian articles including this one updating debian
Unfortunately I cannot find the web link for the July issue workshop article about setting up Debian. I expect they'll make it available in August. They're very enthusiastic, and have included the install files on CD in the July 2003 issue. If I had a spare PC I might try it. Especially as they say you can use it to resurrect a pentium 100 (So I guess my pentium 133 would be ok).

I think Debian will survive as long as the guys who are building it now continue to be interested and new programmers take up the quest for the perfect OS, where perfect is defined more in terms of reliabilty, stablility and security than easy good looks.

What will get the mass market but never the geek market, are cheap (reliable) computers that are more compatible with people. They're still years off true user friendliness in hardware, software and people interfaces. Imagine no pain switching versions, or upgrading. Imagine not needing "training" to learn how to use the latest word processor, or to get the best out of animation software or video editing or being able to play the newest adventure game without having to read 300 pages of the manual, and learn lots of weird keyboard or mouse tricks to control the interface. Imagine computer games that you could play and keep fit at the same time. Hmm, I remember a rowing machine that had a video game of a shark chasing your rowing boat, and you had to row to keep ahead of the shark. That was nearly 10 years ago, but the gym I went to most recently didn't have it. Just numbers. Boring. Imagine having to pedal to keep your aeroplane off the ground in flight simulator?

Hmm got a bit carried away there.

Joe User and Debian

[Gleef]

The article claims that since Debian's technical advantages can (and to some extent have been) be "borrowed" by other distributions, and since Joe User doesn't care about the policy advantages of Debian, then Debian is doomed to be marginalized as the Linux market grows with unprecidented numbers of Joe Users. I strongly disagree.

Debian has always had a strong following with Systems Administrators who want a strong, stable, supportable platform for their GNU/Linux based services that can be centrally administered without waisting a lot of time. The same forces will make Debian significant as a corporate desktop. This is a huge market, and while Joe User might be on some of those computers, he's not the one making the decision.

Red Hat wins its share of this market through marketing, Debian wins its share through precisely the same policy superiority that the author discounts. Sure, Joe User doesn't understand the policy advantages, but Joe User doesn't play in this field. Sure, Red Hat and other corporate marketted distros will mean Debian will probably never even get a majority share of this field, as long as there are systems people who are allowed to make systems decisions, Debian will be a player here.

The other two markets are Small/Home Businesses, and Home Users. These are the fields Joe User plays. And no, he's not necessarily likely to gravitate towards Debian (actually, from my experience he is, but all my evidence is anecdotal, and it's irrelevant for my point). What the author misses is a key differentiation distros that borrow from Debian.

Some distros, like the example of Red Hat borrowing apt-rpm/apt-cacher, are alien distros borrowing a tool that was developed by Debian. While they probably will contribute to development of the tool, these don't do much for Debian as a whole.

Other distros are derivative of Debian. They put their own installation and look and feel, do their own marketing and often usability testing. They might not even mention their relation to Debian, but, at their core, they're Debian, and developers developing for these Distros are directly helping Debian development. Some significant distros in this category are: LindowsOS, Progeny and Libranet. They're not Red Hat, but they're growing, and growing strong.

I feel Debian's chances of being marginalized are slim.

Wisdom requested to go from RH to Debian

[RickySilk]

Let me preface this stating I know very little about Debian so please be gentle. I am more a web developer than a sys-admin, though I wear both hats. I don't like babysitting the server I have a few sites running on therefore I chose RH for the RH Network and up2date. I prefer RH 7.3 but recently I got a little worried when I read something here about RH cutting 7.3 off. I tried 8 once and it just wasn't stable. I havn't tried 9 yet but I guess I'm not all that optimistic after my 8 experience.

Anyhow, this got me thinking... would this be a good time to go ahead and switch to a different distro? Of course Debian was first to enter my mind since I read it's praises here all the time. Here's my question, after the initial investment of time into the install how much time should expect to invest in a Debian install? Will apt make it easy for me to keep my server updated with the latest security patches? Are there Debian lists to let me know when there's a security patch I need?

I hope I've explained myself well enough to get some helpful responses. Also, if there's another distro you would recomend let me know.

Re:Wisdom requested to go from RH to Debian

[juahonen]

If your RedHat installation doesn't give you what you need from a server operating system, it's a good time to think about switching. I would not rush it, since there is always the chance something is screwed and restoring an entire system back is not easily done even if you keep full backups. You should at least familiarize yourself with Debian before you start running servers with it.

The Debian install is not much different from the rest of the distros. If you know how Linux works, the text-based installation progress is quite simple. You can set it up to get packages from the net, so there's no need to burn all the CD's. The Debian web site has links to netinstall ISO images which are only 10-30 MB.

For me Debian install takes about half an hour. You might need considerably more on your first run. But heed this warning: Don't run task-sel nor dselect to pick the apps. I've yet to hear of a successful use of those two utilities. Especially for a server environment, you probably don't want to have all kinds of software lying around (both task-sel and dselect install tons of software you didn't want).

After you have your Debian system configured, it's a simple matter of apt-cache search'ing and apt-get install'ing the software you need. The dependency system will take care of the libraries and softwares to which the software you want depends on. After two hours you should be set up (depending on your network connection speed) with the software you need.

To keep up with security, choose only stable Debian packages. Then it's a simple matter of scripting to set up a cron job to do atp-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade periodically.

You might also want to take a look at Gentoo Linux, which offers similar packaging system to Debian. Gentoo philosophy is that you're provided with the package information and source codes which are compiled on your system for optimal setup; there's no binary distribution. I don't know of their security update model.

And if you're open-minded, there are always the BSDs.

Re:Wisdom requested to go from RH to Debian

[jonoxer]

As far as installation time goes, well, that varies ;-)

One of the earlier articles covers running the basic installer, but you may have trouble getting to it right now since the linmagau server is slashdotted:

http://www.linmagau.org/modules.php?op=modload&nam e=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=46&pag e=1

As for time to invest in updating security patches etc, that depends which distro (Stable, Testing, Unstable) you go with. For a server, use Stable. Then as long as you have security.debian.org in your sources.list (the default if you use the Woody installer) and do a regular "apt-get update; apt-get upgrade" you'll be set as far as security patches are concerned.

For Testing and Unstable the situation is slightly more complex, but for a server they are irrelevant unless you start doing things like backporting recent packages - not something you are likely to do until you learn more about Debian.

I'm intending to do a future article on the process Debian use for security patches, advisories etc. It's in my TOC on www.debianuniverse.com anyway ;-)

Re:Debian is a Dinosaur

[Alkarismi]

You're considering the issue ONLY from your perspective as a desktop user! Take a look at how much businesses spend on their server-side compared with the desktop and you'll see that the server is where it's at! The spend on the desktop is going to go WAYYYYYYYYYYY down and GNU/Linux will play its part in this.
You are correct that Debian has proved itself on servers, that is why there will always be a place for it whilst it sticks to its heritage.
If you really like portage that much you should try FreeBSD btw, it kicks your portage into touch ;)

Re:Debian and other distros

[Moraelin]

Please don't take it as some offence, but you seem confuse two very different issues there.

Yes, Windows does insist on doing the non-neighbourly thing and do whatever it damn pleases, like it's the boss. It's done so all the time. One of the things which put me off as early as Win'95 was that it insisted to auto-detect something completely wrong, in spite of my best efforts to tell it not to.

Yes, I too would like some more control over what happens on _my_ computer. Bill Gates has his own computer(s), he doesn't need to completely take over mine, thank you very much.

_However_, I fail to see how that means that user-UNfriendly is the way to go. Yes, you can still edit your own config files, and noone will replace them with a Windows-style registry. But why is it bad if Random J User can configure the same things via a comfortable GUI?

Some people seem to have this elitist attitude that "Hey, we're the only ones who matter, because we can chain 10 obscure shell commands via pipes, to achieve some trivial result. All you point-and-drool GUI users suck and should go away."

And it's _precisely_ this kind of attitude which has kept Linux off the desktop so far.

When Mr Oldtimer Guru wants to demonstrate Linux to his pal Random J User, or help Random J User configure his freshly installed Linux distro... guess what happens? Let's say it's something as easy as helping Random J User configure his ISDN connection.

The knowledgeable Mr Oldtimer Guru starts grepping around and editing arcane config files in emacs or vi. All while his pal Random J User is getting this frightening impression that the _only_ way is to go through all that nightmare. Because for Random J User, with zero Unix knowledge, it _is_ a nightmare to just look at all that. He's already getting the creeps at the mere thought of trying to remember that the next time he needs to change something.

That is already assuming that Mr Oldtimer Guru isn't elitist too. We're assuming here that he's a nice guy, but as it happens, just a too firm believer in the command line and vi. He wouldn't even _consider_ using a nice GUI there, just because, you know, GUIs are just for those clueless Windows wimps.

Whereas if Mr Oldtimer Guru remembered that it's all for the benefit of a NON-technical person, and used one of the nice GUIs available for configuring an ISDN connection in Linux, _then_ Random J User might have felt less threatened. Maybe Random J User wouldn't then proceed to uninstall Linux and swear never to touch it again.

So basically yeah, user-unfriendly != survivability. And it's a good thing, too. The whole "unfriendly == good" or "unfriendly == the proper Unix way" philosophy is doing far more harm to Linux than Microsoft ever did.

"I love Debian, but ..."

[Xouba]

I found very funny the messages that start like this. It seems no one dares to complain about Debian, because they've somewhat accepted that it's "superior" (note the quotes; I'm not saying it is, just quoting). Anyway, the "I love Debian, but I use <distro> because <reason>" is quite standard. Usually <reason> has been it's hard to install, and it seems that it's still the number one complaint. I agree to a point with that: it's hard if you know nothing about computers. I wouldn't ask my fashion designer fellow to install Debian only by himself (though, thanks to his friends, he's quite computer savvy now, and he's the "computer expert" in his own department :-)), but I won't ask him to install Mandrake or RH either. If you don't know what a partition is, you won't understand that you need to partition a HDD even if it's said in big, red and blinking letters, with a nice dancing HDD that sings aloud.

But anyway, on to the trolling:

<standard_debian_zealot_rant>

As other have said, Debian is not just apt. One of the reasons given, and something that I think most people don't value enough, is the ability to upgrade fully the distribution with 0 downtime. Ever tried to upgrade a rpm-based distro? I did only a few times, so correct me if I'm wrong; but usually it means inserting the CD with the new distro and upgrading. I'm not sure if that means that you have to reboot, but I'd dare to say that you have. And that is what a corporate environment needs? My ass.

There's a trend that I've always seen in Linux, since I started: people start with "flashy" distros (RH, SuSE, Mandrake, etc.), because they're easier to install. As they know more about Linux, they gradually change to Debian. This may be not true anymore; there are always the wanna-try-coolest-distro types that will install anything that is perceived as new and cool; I think that they're mostly into Gentoo now. But it has been true in my experience.

I know people that sysadmin RH boxes, and they usually like Debian once they've worked a bit with it. Debian may be hard to install, but in the long run is the easiest to maintain; and that's not only because of apt, but because it's very well thought off, and not driven just because marketing.

</standard_debian_zealot_rant>

C'mon, -1 Redundant or Troll. I've earned it :-)

Re:"I love Debian, but ..."

[chill]

I found very funny the messages that start like this. It seems no one dares to complain about Debian, because they've somewhat accepted that it's "superior" (note the quotes; I'm not saying it is, just quoting). ...

Okay, I'll say it. I don't use nor recommend Debian. Nor do I consider it superior. Sorry.

Why? Debian is a religion, not an Operating System. (Okay, GNU/Debian-Linux...whatever.)

The original article was talking a great deal about Linux for "Joe User" and on the desktop.
Joe User is NOT interested in debates over licenses, nor the relative merits of FOSS vs Closed-Source, not 90% of anything else that is discussed on Slashdot.

Joe User is interested in getting their work/play done. All their friends have MP3, their DVD/CD player plays MP3 disks and the little gizmos sold at WalMart play MP3. They DO NOT CARE about the license or that it isn't "free". They DO NOT CARE about ogg-vorbis. They want to play their music and have no problem PAYING FOR THE LICENSE for the MP3 format. The bought the CD/DVD player, the RIO and (sometimes) the CD.

Joe User wants to PLAY THEIR DVD without a crapload of hacks to get around licensing CSS. They DO NOT CARE about the politics or the license fee.

Joe User wants to be able to edit/create Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Project, Publisher and Visio files. NOT understand the merits of "closed" vs "open" formats. They need to pay the bills, and if they work in an office that usually means MS Office file formats.

Repeat after me: "The computer is a TOOL, not a way of life. The operating system is a TOOL, not a religion."

Back to the beginning -- why I neither use nor recommend Debian. Because I'm not interested in making excuses for lack of perceived functionality to people who just want to do their work or play a game.

If it is Linux, for a non-geek, it is Red Hat or SuSE. Most non-geeks DO NOT WANT TO BECOME geeks, which is what they will have to do to appreciate Debian.

Re:Debian is a Dinosaur

[MrPink2U]

Debian will remain my first choice for a server distro for its stability and for ease of maintenance (at least for me).

While I agree with your statement that Debian will never take over the desktop market, I disagree with the statement regarding Gentoo. Gentoo is a little too techie for Jane/Joe user. Gentoo's installation procedure is no piece of cake if you aren't an experienced Linux/Unix user. chroot, mke2fs, fdisk, etc. aren't tools that I could see any of my non-IT friends undertaking.

Please don't take this as a Gentoo flame. I think it is a fun distro with a lot of up to date packages. It's just that with today's hardware I really don't see the need to tailor my software for my architecture. The performance gains aren't worth waiting for the compiles to finish.

Remember Corel Linux?

[VernonNemitz]

It's my understanding that Corel Linux was based on Debian. Rumor has it that Microsoft was so afraid that they bought up a bunch of Corel shares and made the company cease and desist. More recent rumor has it that Microsoft has now dumped Corel, not unlike rats leaving a sinking ship. BUT-- Corel still has Name Recognition. Without Microsoft to say them nay, why shouldn't Corel distribute Debian Linux once again?

Useability

[stephenpeters]

In articles like this much is made of the inevitable decline of Windows desktops in favour of GNU/Linux. Journalists like to predict when Microsoft will die and which distribution will be the new OS star. This however may all be irrelevant to average users, as neither Microsoft nor Open Source Software have yet produced an operating system that the average computer illiterate user considers useable.

Microsoft is driven by its marketing machine to produce more and more features in a relentless treadmill of unecessary upgrades. So providing a horrific mess of options and menus to the user.

Development of Open Source operating systems have been driven by the needs of its developers. While many of the packages are indeed excellent they do not provide an easy to use system for the end user. No one has yet produced a free distribution that the average user would find easy to use. Each desktop has its own quirks and way of doing things.

I belive that the next few years will see GNU/Linux or ****BSD becoming the dominant server operating system. This is something that Debian excels at. The desktop market is up for grabs as Microsoft seem to be faltering. Apple seem to understand the useability angle as their current systems are eminently user friendly. If Apple keep the costs of their hardware down they are well placed to own the desktop market for a while.

Only when a distribution such as Debian tries to produce a distribution with usability as the overiding priority will users switch to GNU/Linux.

In the long term though Open Source Software will inevitably be the only choice for the majority of software worldwide, not just the desktop.

Steve

Joe user will dump Linux anyway ..

[Mr_Silver]

... if his experience with WinModems is anything like mine.

Is there any simple (as in Joe User simple, not simple as in run this script, patch this file, compile this kernal simple) way to get WinModem support under Linux?

I always said that the user interface needed to be slicker to get people using it. With Redhat 9 (and Gnome) I think it's there - but the absolute killer for me is that i've wasted far too much time so far farting around with trying to get a WinModem to work.

If Joe User can't dial up to check his hotmail - Linux will be off the PC before you know it.

Wow, Deja Vu...

[StressGuy]

A can remember a fairly simialar thread on Slashdot a few years ago. Back then there was a strong "GUI is for weenies" mentality and it was the Slackware fans that were the true hardcore Linux crowd (whatever happened to Slackware?).
My position back then was that, "If you want Linux to compete with Windows on the desktop, then it has to be as easy to use as windows, if you don't want it to be within the abilities of the average user, then you will never compete with windows". Well, *that* commentary caused some backlash.

Linux (or GNU/Linux if you must), is a good system regardless of whether it competes with Windows on the desktop or not - it's certainly doing well in the server market. However, what I said back then is just as true today. For Linux to compete on the desktop, "average Joe user" must be able to pop in a CD and have the installation auto-detect everything he needs and generally "take him by his little pink hand" and walk him through everything he needs to do. The average user just wants it to work, he has neither the time nor the inclination to fiddle with it. He's not lazy, he's just not that "hard-core" about computers. Additionally, he needs Quicken (or an equivalent), he needs TurboTax (or an eq.), he needs AutoCad, he wants to play games (GameSpy for Linux?), etc.. If he can't get what he wants/needs, then he'll stay with Windows regardless of whether or not he feels Linux is a superior system.

Today, Linux enjoys a growing market share. It may well compete with or even replace Windows on the desktop and I hope it does. If it is desired to get there from here, then Linux must compete with Windows in it's own areana.

Elegance and Simplicity

[shplorb]

To me, Debian is simple and elegant. I don't use Linux for a desktop system at all anymore, I use OS X and Windows. Why do I use OS X? Because it's simple and elegant. Windows isn't exactly that, but it's a lot more so than your average Linux desktop. (I'm talking Win2K, not XP here.)

I do, however, use Debian on a couple of servers. I used to use RedHat because you could pretty much install it and use it, but when I needed to modify something - like add a new module to Apache - it would all turn to shit. Eventually I tried out Debian because I'd heard ravings about apt. There was no going back.

After I purchased an iBook I came to appreciate form and functionality more than the intricacies of how things work. Sure, it's not as powerful as my friends Toshiba, but it does the job whilst being smaller, quieter, lighter and longer-lasting on a battery charge than his. I'm sick to death of fucking with drivers in Windows, etc. I just want things to work, and to work simply so I can get on with being productive. Microsoft try to do it, but it just doesn't work. (Look at XP or MSN Messenger 6 - meant to look simple and nice, but horribly cluttered and confusing.) Apple know how to do it. Same with Debian.

I see Debain being to Linux distributions as Apple is to PC's and Ferrari is to cars - a small, niche player, producing quality products for those who appreciate the finer things in life.

Re:kernels

[sevensharpnine]

[...] which will attract the more technical users when they abandon linux
as too mainstream [...]

And exactly what is wrong with "mainstream" software? If you're picking your OS based on l33t obscurity, stay the hell out of the discussion. Technical merit and licensing are far more important than bragging rights on irc.

deja vu

[illsorted]

I thought this looked familiar:

Exhibit A

Re:Debian and other distros

[RealisticWeb.com]

I think you are touching on an important point here that a lot of people miss. We all know that one of the big reasons that personal computers running DOS became so popular was the ability to twiddle with the hardware yourself. Part of the whole experience has always been being able to go down to the local hardware store and buy an upgrade card/chip/disk and fiddle with it till it worked. It is frustrating a lot of times and you might cuss a bit but overall it is fun to do. The part that we forget about is that the other half of the fun was that the OS itself was a tinker tool! I spent a lot of time back in the day doing thinks like customizing my prompt, tweaking my memory management, and writing batch files to simplify tasks. This was all before linux or the Internet existed, and since being a kid I didn't have access to any UNIX machine, this was all I had. As time went on and MS continued to release their products, I found more and more of my control over the system being taken away from me. I could still play with the hardware but MS was doing everything it could to maintain complete control over how things worked on my machine and giving me "permission denied" errors. Permission denied?! It's my computer! At about the time of Windows 98 I had finally got sick of loosing control and started looking for an alternative. That is when I discovered Linux. I found to my amazement that not only was there an OS that gave me COMPLETE control over my machine, but that it was totally free! It was very liberating! My love of tinkering had early on led me to an interest in programming, so I had become quite good at QBASIC since that was the only thing available to me in DOS. Now with Linux I found an amazing collection of development tools, and along with the help of the newly formed internet to get my questions answered I grew up to be a professional developer.

My point is, "user friendly" isn't always a good thing, and it doesn't appeal to all people. In fact I see many Linux distros making the same mistake as MS in this area. The key is increasing "ease-of-use" while maintaining "user-control". This is why I love Debian. If you are a Linux noob, just the very act of installing it will make you learn more about your computer. Why is this bad? The end user isn't nearly as stupid as most people assume (and yes I have done help desk support). The problem is that people are trained to be stupid. They are milked along and so protected from icky-computer stuff that they don't let themselves believe that they can do anything with their computer unless it is all taken care of for them. Even if they are smart people! Of course there are certain things that need explaining to noobs such as "what is this hda1 stuff?" and how to use the man pages, but if you actually let people figure things out, it is amazing how much they will learn.

I say Debian shouldn't change a thing. And if they take my advice, they may not ever be at the top of the market share, but the user base will never dry up. As more and more Linux flavors make the same mistakes as Windows has, right down to the poor UI, more and more people will turn to TRUE GNU/Linux.

Lindows is built on Debian...

[Newer Guy]

When you've got the fastest growing desktop OS built on your Linux distribution, you're in no danger of becoming irrelevant. Lindows (if marketed properly, and I believe is has been/will be), has the potential to become the second largest graphical OS, beating the Mac. I believe that Lindows will soon be free, because they're clearly moving towards using Click n Run subscriptions for revenue. That's good for all of us, because Debian is already one of the easiest distrbutions to download and add programs to.

Elitist is putting it politely

[devphil]

(Disclaimer: I run Debian stable at work, and Debian unstable at home.)

This is a self-fullfilling prophecy, and to change this will take quite a major change from the existing Debian (fairly elitist) culture.

No kidding. Fire up your IRC client, connect to one of the Freenode servers, and join #debian. This is, in theory, a user support channel. In reality, the channel is run along the lines of, "if you have to ask a question, any question at all, you're a luser and deserve every flame we can give you." And they're proud of it; just ask mwilson.

I used to try and answer questions on there, but the flames drown out the conversations too quickly. Basically, "The biggest thing holding Debian back isn't Debian, it's #debian." (i.e., the attitude, not the channel itself)

Why I (mostly) use Debian

[Chad Page]

- testing/unstable *does* have fresh software, and reasonably free of bugs. It has KDE 3.1.2 for instance. (and apt-get can keep testing and unstable straight)

- It works the same way on many, many platforms. I can run the same Linux on my iBook and my x86 boxes, and I only have to remember one way of doing things.

- It has a leaner core installation, which makes it good for setting up firewalls and/or on small hard drives.

- It runs well on old hardware. I'm working on a P133-eleron (no L2 cache) notebook for a friend and it *needs* XFree 3.3.6 to work, and Debian still has that. Heck, I even got KDE running somewhat decently on it. (having 72MB helps)

- Very hackable. Look at Knoppix, which is itself very hackable. My main home 'puter runs Knoppix on a 1GB CF card with an IDE adapter. (It's a tweaked version, but the regular version works on CF too!)

[it's ironic that Knoppix, arguably the easiest type of Linux to get running, is based on Debian which has one of the more complex installers ;) ]

Basically, it's what works for me.