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Debian: A Brief Retrospective
IanMurdock writes "This weekend, Debian turned 10. To mark the occasion, I've written a retrospective, published at LinuxPlanet. There's also a very nice piece, based in part on my early writings about Debian as well as the retrospective, at internetnews.com."
I still consider myself somewhat of a linux newbie, but I've learned as much as I need to manage a few small servers.
My day job is selling medical equipment on the internet but I'm also the "computer guy" for the company I work at. Which btw has the added benefit of some extra job security, because no one else knows how to fix the network when it breaks.
I started tinkering with RedHat and Mandrake about 3 years ago, and have recently installed Debian on a little backup server we have here at work. What a breath of fresh air! I am so glad to be out of RPM hell - those of you who have tried it know how frustrating it is to try and install an RPM, only to find out that you need files A, B, and C to make it work. Then you find out A, B, and C need X, Y, and Z, etc. etc. and that eventually you need an entirely new kernel. You can spend hours trying to fuss with those dependencies. Ugh.
Now with debian it's as simple as:
apt-get install whatever
and bam, you're done! It's awesome! I had a backup server with trouble ticket system up and running in my office here within a few hours (and probably would have been faster if I was more expert).
The Debian apt system is simply awesome, and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants a stable, easy to maintain linux box.
Debian _is_ easy to use.
Just hard to install =)
The FSF doesn't recommend carrot cake, drinking beer, or ironing your underpants either. But it wouldn't be fair to reword that as suggesting they're recommending you don't eat carrot cake, drink beer, or iron your underpants.