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.'"

Comments

Other Distros

[IAAP]

FTFA:Many people actively involved with Debian development are working as system administrators themselves. Thus, they know very well what their own needs are, and in case Debian doesn't meet them, they are in the position to fix that. However, ideally, one should not have to be a Debian contributor to successfully deploy Debian in production environments.

I'm not an admin - outside of my own hacking at home. But, help me out here, is Debian more of an enterprise-admin friendly-scalable distro than, say, RedHat Enterprise?

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?

Great book, too bad about the software

[FishandChips]

Kudos to Martin Krafft for writing his book. Many dream but few ever get it together ...

That said, I spent most of 2005 running Debian Unstable and Debian Testing on different systems and ended up finding both overrated and generally a disappointmennt. Debian was too demanding of time and needed seemingly endless fiddling around and careful management. It also took a lot of time to set up, though admittedly that is a one-off when an installation is still fresh. More important, the Debian developer community seemed shot through with an obsession with doing things the Debian way, with college-level debates (aka rows), with considerable disdain for new users and with frankly pretty obscure things of little interest to many in the everyday world. Overall, I began to wonder if some of these guys would recognize an end-user if they fell over one and my faith in the Debian way rapidly dwindled.

None of this should detract from Krafft's achievement, though. It's a heck of a good thing to have done. I do find it a little odd that he should recommend that new users try Ubuntu rather than Debian. One is tempted to ask: what's the problem whereby they can't use Debian, then?

For myself, I've now gone back to another distro. It's pretty nearly as capable as Debian, with the difference that its devs are technical experts who confine themselves to delivering what works. A distro that puts out for its users without striking tiresome poses or co-opting its users into politics of some kind is much the more preferable, for me at least.

The Community Sucks

[c_spencer100]

I've never had anything against Debian itself. My problem, as with a lot of other people, was always the arrogance that just seemed to ooze from the average Debian user. If you don't know what I'm refering to, then you probably relatively new to the Linux Community. It seemed for the longest that every question posted on every forum yielded the answer "get Debian". Debian's problem was NEVER being misunderstood - it was being misrepresented by the zealots that actually think their pretentous attitude represents the Debian Community as a whole.