Installed Debian GNU/Linux on my home machine

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After using RedHat Linux for the last 3 years or so, I installed
Debian GNU/Linux [1] on my new 62G drive [2] while at MIT last week,
and added it to my existing system at home on the weekend.

Why did I switch to Debian? Redhat's packages don't handle
upgrades and dependencies as well as they should, and rpmfind [3]
doesn't do the right thing by default as often as it could.

I've been convinced that I wanted to switch for about a year now,
but had been putting it off since changing something like that
is always a painful multi-day process of getting everything set
up and configured the way you like. (same goes for switching
window managers, mail clients, etc.)

Now I have way more disk space than I know what to do with:

   Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
   /dev/hda1             1.8G  904M  877M  51% /
   /dev/hdc6             988M  343M  595M  37% /usr/local
   /dev/hda6              46G   35G  9.4G  79% /home
   /dev/hda9             5.5G  1.8G  3.4G  34% /home/gerald
   /dev/hdc1             1.2G 1008M  114M  90% /old
   /dev/hdc5              14G  1.7G   12G  13% /backup
   /dev/hda7             2.7G   20k  2.5G   1% /spare1
   /dev/hdc7             509M   20k  483M   1% /spare2
   /dev/hdc9             1.5G   20k  1.4G   1% /spare3

(the partitioning is kind of goofy since I didn't repartition the
old drive.)

I would have even more space left, but I grabbed 25 gigs of MP3s
and other misc data from work before leaving. I'll probably throw
away a lot of those MP3s when I make time to go through them.

[1] http://www.debian.org/

[2] http://necxdirect.necx.com/hai/prod_page.html?key=0000155176&nonce=guest
   MAXTOR 62GB DIAMONDMAX ULTRA ATA/66 - RETAIL
   Price:   $260.95 USD
   Shipping:  $8.45 USD

[3] http://rpmfind.net/

--
Gerald Oskoboiny <[email protected]>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/

Re: Installed Debian GNU/Linux on my home machine

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On Tue, Aug 29, 2000, Gerald Oskoboiny wrote:
> Why did I switch to Debian? Redhat's packages don't handle
> upgrades and dependencies as well as they should, and rpmfind [3]
> doesn't do the right thing by default as often as it could.

Not only Debian's packaging system is really cool, but Debian's
philosophy is also important.

First, it is very modular: for example, you have a telnet and a telnetd
package, etc. It allows you to install only what you want.

Second Debian is a project promoting free software. Non-free programs
(Pine, Tin, XV, Netscape, etc) are tagged as such and you are not
encouraged to use them.

I think that the last important thing about Debian is that it kicks ass.
For example, you have startup scripts which really work.

The only drawback of Debian is that it is less Plug'n'Play than Red Hat,
since it will ask you questions which will sometimes require a good
knowledge of Linux.

I guess that it's a trade-off: either you want an easy-to-use OS (Red
Hat is IMO Linux's Windows, with hardware detection at startup, a lot of
things done for you by default and you always have surprises after
upgrades) or a powerful one (with Debian you can really do whatever you
want, but it requires as Gerald said some configuration work). The good
news is that Debian with apt, debconf and now auto-apt in Woody is
becoming easier and easier to use.  And Red Hat is becoming more and
more like Windows. :-)

I must say that I understand the need of a Linux distribution with with
ease-of-use of Windows, but I don't understand that somebody who knows
and understand Linux might be happy with it. And I am not sure that in
the long run this is what people will want to put on their servers.

--
Hugo Haas <[email protected]> - http://larve.net/people/hugo/
To alcohol! The cause of and solution to all of life's problems. --
Homer J. Simpson

Re: Installed Debian GNU/Linux on my home machine

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Parents:

On Tue, Aug 29, 2000 at 08:08:41AM -0400, Hugo Haas wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 29, 2000, Gerald Oskoboiny wrote:
> > Why did I switch to Debian? Redhat's packages don't handle
> > upgrades and dependencies as well as they should, and rpmfind [3]
> > doesn't do the right thing by default as often as it could.
>
> Not only Debian's packaging system is really cool, but Debian's
> philosophy is also important.

Yeah, Redhat is a public for-profit company just like Microsoft,
they're just at different points in the food chain. (and their
products don't suck quite as hard.)

:
> I think that the last important thing about Debian is that it kicks ass.
> For example, you have startup scripts which really work.

I have to say, after only a few days I am very impressed.

I was pretty happy with RPMs and rpmfind for a long time (you
can usually do "rpmfind foo" and then "rpm -U /tmp/foo" to
install something), but frequently there would be many versions
of a given package and you wouldn't know which was the best one.
(and rpmfind wouldn't find the right one by default, or the one
you happened to pick would have clashing dependencies.)

Now, almost anything I want to install is easily done with a
single command: "apt-get install packagename". Sample:

  root@devo:/root# apt-get install bind
  Setting up bind (8.2.2p5-11) ...
  To be most effective, /etc/resolv.conf should list the IP address of your
  local machine (127.0.0.1) as a nameserver. It currently does not.

  Would you like this to be added? [Y]
  Starting domain name service: named.

Very cool.

--
Gerald Oskoboiny <[email protected]>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/

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