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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.'"
Hmmmm... started using Slackware around '95, went through a few kernel revisions, then put computers on the back-burner for a while to investigate post-puberty options. So how old did that make him during his long time NT testing years? How do I sign my kids up for that sort of opportunity at age 11-13? Maybe there's a reason why "Microsoft had ignored every single one of my elaborate suggestions and wishlist reports in 4.0".
I'm sure he makes many important contributions but, wow, people tell me that I'm arrogant if I make an elaborate suggestion at 30.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
The organization is as interesting as the technology. Lots of people are willing to put in lots of volunteer time.
I wonder how long it will be before the business schools start to take notice of successful open source projects and learn a bit about management.
The ease of using Debian based systems in terms of installing software, and easy updates might be just the thing which'll boost linux to the desktops of the majority of computer users who do not want to learn or be exposed to the intricacies of the operating system before using it.. we shall have to just wait and see..
is Debian more of an enterprise-admin friendly-scalable distro than, say, RedHat Enterprise?
It depends on your definition of "enterprise". And it really depends on the admin. For your typical, point-and-click, illiterate computer monkey "enterprise" admin who only knows enough to install updates, reinstall the entire OS, and call for outside help, RedHat is perfect. In fact, it appears that this is RedHat's primary market.
For admins who know what they're doing and can invest time in making their jobs easier and more productive, however, Debian is an absolute dream.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
"scalable" does not mean from the developer's view, but from the user's view.
When reading the interview, I would guess: neither would Krafft call it "Wonder OS".
The quote you refer to was not from Krafft.just sayin'...
my pet machine
If you really want to use the latest software, why not use Ubuntu? They do all the fiddling for you.
Cross-platform compatibility is essential. If the upstream Apache maintainers say Apache can be stopped with apachectl stop, Debian should damn well support this interface. I don't care if they provide /etc/init.d/httpd stop in addition, but they should support the standard interface. This makes life infinitely simpler for people who deal with many different systems---they don't have to keep relearning things. It also makes things simpler for people offering support to Apache users.
The tremendous benefits of cross-platform compatibility come from a package's interface being exactly the same on every system. It is a relatively minor benefit for different packages to have similar interfaces. Breaking cross-platform compatibility, as Debian does, for the sake of cross-package similarity is a horrible idea.
I should point out that I'm picking on Debian here because they are especially bad about this, but almost every major Linux distribution is guilty of unncessarily violating cross-platform compatibility in some way.
You are completely wrong. The reason why Debian includes so many "old versions" of all software is because of the principle that security fixes should never force you to upgrade to the latest version; rather the fixes should be backported to the old version of the software. Thus, you don't have to worry about an upgrade breaking the functionality of your application in an unexpected way. This approach it is much harder than just tracking the current release like other distributions do with the mindset that if the software is new, too new for there to be many meaningful bug reports, then the quality must be good!
Debian also has very stringent requirements on how many known bugs it can contain before a release can occur. Just because the software is older does not mean that it is automagically bug free. Enormous effort goes into squashing bugs, especially before a release. Don't forget that these bugs span eleven architectures too and fixing these obscure bugs which only appear on MIPS improve the software overall. I'd argue that Debian very likely does more to imporve the overall quality of Free Software than just about any other entity.
2^5
10-15 hours to install Debian? That's too long even for an 'expert' install. Instead of wasting 20-30 hours after the first install, why didn't you just go to lists.debian.org and troubleshoot? This sounds like a troll to me.
(-:
2^5
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Thank God somebody else finds this to be the case. So I'm not a complete idiot after all. (or at least not the only complete idiot.) Thank you. I got my printer to work but only in some kind of half arsed crippled kind of way. It is an HP and supposed to be fully supported. Feh!
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
I went through a different set of phases:
Debian (Woody) -> SuSE -> Ubuntu -> SuSE.
Debian Woody was NOT the right distro for somebody to start out on Linux with. I thought I had mis-installed it when all I got was a command line- I didn't know I had to startx. So I went to SuSE and ran with that for a year and a half. When my HDD crapped out, I thought I would give Ubuntu a try, and it stayed with me a couple of months. It was nice, but suspending was a ***** and OpenSuSE 10.0 finally became usable. So I went back to it. APT is wonderful, Debian-based systems are lighter, but the only distro that always works well with little dicking around is SuSE.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
For me it's all about will I be able to build my tarballs
Build tarballs?
In an enterprise environment?
You must be kidding.
Red Hat has lots of tools that make deployment quick and easy, *especially* for the admins who know their stuff.
More specifically, debian stable is (really) good for servers that don't need the latest and greatest. It sucks for workstations because you'll end up being one or two major versions behind for the most crucial desktop packages, including significant feature, stability and security improvements that go into these packages.
Debian unstable is good only for non production workstations. Specifically it doesn't have security updates; it will be in a more or less broken state most of the time (which may or may not affect you depending on which packages you use). Debian testing is only slightly better, you still don't get the security updates and buggyness still is an issue. Blindly updating a debian testing install is a ticket to disaster (been there, done that).
What's frustrating for new Debian users is that the Debian developer community is not really that interested in them. If you can get it to work good for you, if you can't RTFM. Also it is a safehaven for the ideological elements in the linux community. You know, the ones that insist on speaking of Gnu/linux. Dealing with the more extremist types in this community can be tedious. Lots of people use Debian for ideological reasons rather than pragmatic reasons. Recently the pragmatic part of the community made a mass defection to ubuntu (debian derived).
I'd recommend anyone looking for production use of debian in a desktop environment to only consider ubuntu. For small scale servers debian stable is a good option: you don't get the bloat of the big vendor stuff and it just works. For large scale servers, use something with support and reputation: red hat, suse are good options and all major vendors support them. Only use Debian on large scale production servers if you are willing, permitted and qualified to run it. Because if the shit hits the fan it will be you cleaning up the mess with noone committed to support your mess other than you.
Jilles
If you are going to install cutting edge ports from cvs on freebsd, you should compare it to installing packages from Debian Unstable, not the stable branch. If you are willing to put up with possible system-breaking changes from newer versions being installed, then Testing and Unstable (currently Etch and Sid) are there for you. If you want a guarantee that once setup your system will stay that way, you want Debian Stable.
An Air Force evaluation of Multics, and Ken Thompson's famous Turing award lecture "Reflections on Trusting Trust," showed that compilers can be subverted to insert malicious Trojan horses into critical software, including themselves......This paper describes the technique, justifies it, describes how to overcome practical challenges, and demonstrates it.
This paper is full of it.
The technique is possible, but so impractical as to be completely useless.
Modern compliers aren't actually that advanced. their optimisation capabilites only go so far due to their poor ability to interpret the application. As such, I seriously doubt that compiler trojans are in any way a serious threat. The threat from actual trojans in binaries if far, far, far greater.
May the Maths Be with you!
So she can use Synaptic, which has pretty decent searching built in...