Newbie Debian Questions
Hello all,
I've been investigating the possibility of getting some form of Linux up
and running on my rev. A iMac for about a week now. Unfortunately, my
knowledge of *nix is weak, having never seriously worked with the OS. As
you all know, the learning curve for *nix is steep and I've been having
quite a time sorting through all of the information available on the web
regarding Linux for PPC.
My initial impression was that my only distribution choice would be
LinuxPPC until I stumbled across the Debian for PPC web page one night. Of
the two, I must say that I much prefer Debian's philosophy of staying
completely GNU/open source -- it seems much more in line with the whole
Linux movement. Debian isn't officially out for the Mac yet but I did
notice that there is a potato version available for the PPC on the Debian
ftp site (I also took the time to read the installation instructions
available in the docs section, although many still seemed rather
vague/generic and not yet specifically targeted at the Mac). So, I was
hoping someone could answer the following questions for me:
1) As a newbie to Linux, would it be safer for me to stick with the
"mainstream" Linux solution at this point, LinuxPPC? Will LinuxPPC be
significantly more mature than Debian when Debian is released?
2) If I were to buy a Debian PPC CD, would it be safe to install/use on my
system at this point? Is it at all stable yet? Could I use it for everyday
tasks such as e-mail, web browsing, etc without a significant fear of
crashing?
3) Assuming that buying the CDs would work, would it be easy to keep my
system in sync with the latest potato releases once installed or would I
probably need to buy another CD set once the official release came out?
4) http://www.netnw.com/debian.html is selling the current Debian PPC
release for $29 -- is that a good deal? I couldn't even find the PPC
version on any of the other CD sites listed on the Debian web pages.
5) I know that it's Debian's policy not to give release dates for its
software, but when will Debian be officially released for the PPC? Before
the year 2000? Aw, come on... just a hint? :-)
I know newbie questions can be tedious, so I beg forgiveness if my
questions have been asked a million times before. However, any knowledge on
the subject you could pass along would be greatly appreciated -- thanks in
advance for your help!
Nathan Olsen
nolsen@csulb.edu
"It is our nature to put all knowledge into context in order to tell
a story, and to re-create the world by this means."
--Edward O. Wilson, _Consilience_
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