Debian et al: was re: Mandriva

[Matthew Carpenter]

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Net Llama! wrote:

> Fedora supports all the popular filesystems, including XFS & JFS.

- From Install?  And what of RHEL?

>
>> examples. CentOS is making available a plus repository (and of
>> course there's Dag), but the RedRat (CentOS) base is a bit slim
>> for my tastes.

What does Dag mean?  I know it's another extras repository, but is it
short for Dag-Nasty?  Or what?  If so, it would appear to be like
Madrake's "Cooker".  Is that about accurate?

>
> Good or bad, Redhat provides excellent support to its large
> customers. I spent a chunk of this past week watching RH get kicked
> around by two of its large customers (ache-pee & themequirks).

I do believe the same could be said about Caldera and SCO.  It's us
pee-ons that kept getting in the way, wanting *free* stuff.  Us
freakin' Freeloaders (which always seemed to include those of us who
pay for the distro, just not large enough).

>
> Ugh, i'm sorry. HP servers have the worst RAID controllers ever.
> Slowest IO i've ever seen.

I can't argue there.  Short of their mini-'s I've not had much good to
say about HP's hardware, ever.

>
>>
>> The one thing no one can match (gentoo is trying) is the massive
>> number of packages available with Debian.
>
>
> That's very deceptive, since the Debian package maintanence culture
> is so drastically different than any other distro. All Debian
> packages are always under the big Debian umbrella, where as there
> are RH/FC RPMs floating around everywhere.

'tis true.  Debian sees value in splitting components of software into
different packages, providing more granular control of what gets
installed.  I can't say I mind this too much, nor that I like it,
probably because of my RPM roots.  But when I look at a distro, I'm
not counting the number of packages.  I'm weighing the richness of the
software repository, and how simple it is to install software *after*
install.  So far, I've been much happier in this regard with Debian
offchutes, even though they are not package-rich as Debian-proper.
I'm not sure about the "Debian Umbrella" thing.  I know that it's
commonly accepted to try to keep the Debian-offspring
backwards-compatable with its Debian-roots.  This was the topic of
concern from the Debian-heads to Mark Shuttlesworth, the father of
Ubuntu.  Ubuntu was creating packages that didn't play well with the
rest of the Debian Sarge, which was the base of Hoary.  I can
understand the desire, since it's not a bad idea, particularly because
Ubuntu is definitely outshining Debian at the moment (most likely for
software- and community-friendliness).  Still I'm reminded of a good joke:

The scientists of the world are gathered in successful celebration.
They have learned to create another human being.  They call a
conference with God.  "Hey God, we don't need you anymore.  Piss off."
"Oh yeah?  Let's have a little bake-off.  I'll make a man and then you
make a man."
"Yeah, ok.  Let's do it!"  the scientists all said.  Pride comes
before the fall.
So God picks up some dirt, forms it, and breathes into it.  Suddenly,
the dirt is another human being!  God sits back contentedly and says,
"Your turn."
The scientists consult their notes, confer and plan.  The leader
starts forming dirt into shape when God interrupts.
"No no.  You go get your *own* dirt."


I feel a certain sense of security installing software from a
repository which isn't there when downloading a single package from
who-knows-where.  If RedHat were more like Debian, RPMFind would be an
APT Repository, or several.  Still, I'd much rather go to "Packman"
than RPMFind.  There is just something about having learning something
about the maintainers, and having them maintain more than just a
single RPM.

>
> The past couple weeks have been an eye opening experience. Its
> been so many years since i've done the distro taste-test. All its
> done is further reinforced my prefernce for RH.

To each his own.  :)



- --
Matthew Carpenter
matt at eisgr.com                          http://www.eisgr.com/

Enterprise Information Systems
* Network Server Appliances
* Security Consulting, Incident Handling & Forensics
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