Distributions

[Don Erickson]

In article <317F4501306FD11187020080ADB4811B15D752 at cavern> you write:

>DebIan: Named after Deborah and Ian somebody, 

Murdock

>who put it together in their
>kitchen.  Ian is now making a ridiculous amount of money evolving the
>Corporate distribution.  

Progeny is the name of the distro.

>Uses "apt-get", the "other" package management
>tool, recently reviewed as "best in concept but in desperate need of an
>update".

I've heard this about dselect, which is the old front-end to the debian
package management system.  "Apt-get" which is a command-line front-end to
the debian system (the new text-graphics front end is console-apt, or
capt) is not in need of an update, but rather makes all other package managers
obsolete.  You want to upgrade a package?  Run 'apt-get install <package>'
No searching for compatible binaries, there's a file set up to pull the
newest "official" debian package for your chosen release-level off of an
ftp mirror.  Gee, this version needs four other packages upgraded before
you can install it?  Apt-get tells you what packages are missing, which
ones need to be upgraded, which ones conflict and will be removed, and
asks you if you want to make this plethora of changes to your system.  "Y"
sets it all in motion, and apt-get does it all for you.

It's pretty slick.

The complaint about debian is that its hard to install.  I have installed
dozens of debian systems and frankly don't see what the fuss is about.
But, I started on Slackware, which used to be a total nightmare.

>RedHat is probably your best bet (in the U. S.) for finding compatible
>software and people who can help you learn it.  Mandrake is a little slicker
>and faster.  Slackware and Debian are preferred by developer/coders.

I think that everybody should compile a custom kernel.  A kernel optimized
for your hardware makes a huge difference in speed, in my experience. 
Also, the 2.4 kernels are noticably faster.  On a server, I had the load
on a 2.4 kernel up to 60 (!) rebuilding databases and was still able to
get web pages from it, in a timely fashion. 

Regards,

-Don
-- 
 .sig lite