Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on April 06, 2003 12:05 AM
For years Debian users have tried to bring me to Debian from RedHat. For years I held back because I felt that with such a terrible installer, the rest of the system couldn't be that great. But I finally broke down and used Debian.
Debian's package manager dpkg/apt is slightly technically superior to RedHat/apt (http://apt.freshrpms.net). Debian package maintainers however do a much better job of chosing binary installation directories to maintain forward/backward compatibility. For example, Perl5.6 on on RedHat7.3 is installed to<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/usr/bin/perl/ while Perl5.8 on RedHat8 is installed in<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/usr/bin/perl/ so you cannot install both versions simaltaneously without messing around with source. On Debian, Perl5.6 is installed in<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/usr/bin/perl/5.6/ while Perl5.8 is installed in<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/usr/bin/perl/5.8/ so you can install both from binary packages easily.
And truth to tell, thats about all I liked about Debian. Other than its package management features, the rest of the system is obviously integrated by amateurs and volunteers rather than professionals. (Not to make fun of amateurs...) RedHat's systems have *far* more professional polish and integration. Debian's configuration tools are either non-existant or miserable; most of the time I end up manually editing text files to get what I wanted done. That was so 1997. Perhaps there are better tools somewhere else, but they weren't obvious, and I don't feel like searching for hours/days to learn to do something I did in a few minutes with RedHat. All of RedHat's tools and the installer are Free Software, so I have no idea why they haven't been ported to Debian.
That's not to say Debian is useless. In certain development environments (usually where Debian is already favored) it can be more useful than RedHat. But typically I will choose RedHat for its professional polish any day. On (increasingly rare) occasions package management with RedHat/apt can be annoying, but I do far more than just manage packages on my system.
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Posted by: Anonymous Coward on April 06, 2003 12:05 AMDebian's package manager dpkg/apt is slightly technically superior to RedHat/apt (http://apt.freshrpms.net). Debian package maintainers however do a much better job of chosing binary installation directories to maintain forward/backward compatibility. For example, Perl5.6 on on RedHat7.3 is installed to<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/usr/bin/perl/ while Perl5.8 on RedHat8 is installed in<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/usr/bin/perl/ so you cannot install both versions simaltaneously without messing around with source. On Debian, Perl5.6 is installed in<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/usr/bin/perl/5.6/ while Perl5.8 is installed in<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/usr/bin/perl/5.8/ so you can install both from binary packages easily.
And truth to tell, thats about all I liked about Debian. Other than its package management features, the rest of the system is obviously integrated by amateurs and volunteers rather than professionals. (Not to make fun of amateurs...) RedHat's systems have *far* more professional polish and integration. Debian's configuration tools are either non-existant or miserable; most of the time I end up manually editing text files to get what I wanted done. That was so 1997. Perhaps there are better tools somewhere else, but they weren't obvious, and I don't feel like searching for hours/days to learn to do something I did in a few minutes with RedHat. All of RedHat's tools and the installer are Free Software, so I have no idea why they haven't been ported to Debian.
That's not to say Debian is useless. In certain development environments (usually where Debian is already favored) it can be more useful than RedHat. But typically I will choose RedHat for its professional polish any day. On (increasingly rare) occasions package management with RedHat/apt can be annoying, but I do far more than just manage packages on my system.
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