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The Debian System Explained
An anonymous reader writes "XYZComputing has a great interview with Martin F. Krafft, the author of "The Debian System". From the article: 'Despite Debian GNU/Linux's important role in today's computing environment, it is largely misunderstood and oftentimes even discounted as being an operating system which is exclusively for professionals and elite users. In this book Krafft, explains his concept of Debian, which includes not only the operating system but also its underpinnings. Debian is not only a robust and scalable Linux distribution, but it has many other features which are worth looking into, like its open development cycle and rigorous quality control.'"
I'll use nothing other than Debian and Debian Based distro's. Ubuntu and Kubuntu are nice, as they are based off debian, have the massive package base available, but also are updated a bit more often.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
Debian 3.1 is a dream. Easy to install, no more updating (except for security updates), and rock solid as my desktop OS. FreeBSD was similarly solid, but the package management and printer control for Debian is just so darned easy. Hats off to Debian!
The Death Penalty: Killing people to show others that killing people is wrong.
I've been using only Debian for about 5 years. It's the best. I totally support the community, and the philosophy behind Debian. Debian Stable is great for some purposes, and Debain unstable is great for others.
I've been reading Martin's book (it cost me $30), and unless the second half has a lot more in it than the first half does, there's not much there that an experienced user of Debian doesn't already know. So if you're already an experienced Debian user, the news is good: you already probably understand a lot more than you think you do! If you're not already experienced with Debian, what are you waiting for?
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
From what I've seen between various distros(No Debian), there's their add-ons (desktop add-ins, installation software, etc...), and then there's just Linux, XFree86, and all of the GNU software stuff. Is Debian that much better whe it comes for day to day operations?
Well-tested, stable packages with no dependency issues or known security bugs and security patches, yes. Proprietary tools? No. Debian strictly follows the Debian Free Software Guidelines, which means that anything in their distro any other distro could just take. I can't really speak for everything you need in an enterprise setup but as a home server & remote X desktop it is excellent.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I have since installed gentoo, using the standard install process, and it's worked pretty much perfectly - only gripe I have is it won't automatically generate an initrd with the right scsi modules like it can on x86, but I can live with that. So much for no linux distro having supported it for half a decade - I don't think gentoo's even been around that long.
I am trolling
Linux debian 2.4.26 #1 Sat May 1 18:58:40 EDT 2004 sparc64 GNU/Linux
debian:~> cat
cpu : TI UltraSparc IIi (Sabre)
I'm not saying that your problems aren't real, but Debian certainly supports Sparc and in my experience, it does so very well. I've had nothing but great success with Debian and Sparc, including the installer. Perhaps you should consider filing a bug report with the Debian Installer team. The architectures which have fewer users, receive fewer bug reports. How can you expect them to fix a bug they may not know exists?
As an aside, there is a good chance Sparc will be cut from Etch, so you may not have to worry about Debian "pretending to support SPARC hardware" in the future.
2^5
Then, to look for something like... libvorbis, I would just have to do this:
And it returns this:
Easy as pie.
One thing I did not specify -- as I did not mention Ubuntu in the introduction:
I recommend Ubuntu to new users of Linux because in my experience, most of them were just that: new users who wanted to read their email, author documents, and use their laptops power management at night. Sure, all of this is very possible with Debian, but IME not really for the newbie.
Here, Ubuntu has done a good job at making Debian more accessible. That is all. And being accessible to the Linux newbie just isn't "Debian's place" IMHO. We make a stable operating system that is a reliable tool for those who know how to use it. We don't want bells and whistles and lots of automatic stuff making it easier for the new users.
I would not recommend Ubuntu to someone who has the potential to climb the curve quickly. And of the dozens of people I've switched to Linux/Ubuntu in the past months, most have already switched to Debian. I think that's a natural thing to do as you exceed the offerings of Ubuntu, which is am operating system that trades much flexibility for the tight integration and beautification it has.
Anyway, to each their own. Going for Ubuntu is probably not a mistake. Heading right for Debian isn't either, but you're in for some more work.
echo mailto: !#^."<*>"|tr "<*> mailto:" net@madduck
Contrast this with DJB's crackheaded
An alternative is to forsake the shared library cache alltogether, and maintain an ever-growing collection of PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, etc, environmental variables. If I enjoyed hammering nails through my dick in this way, I'd swich to Solaris where this insanity seems to be accepted.
Hey, maybe I should I just switch to Windows, where the solution to this problem is for every app to ship private copies of the shared libraries that it requires in the same directory as its binaries, wasting disk space and causing uncounted security problems...