Re: Need Reasons for switching to Debian from Redhat

["nate" <debian-user@aphroland.org>]

<quote who="Grant Edwards">


>  * Tasksel UI is confusing.  I watched as my neighbor was
>    accidentally dumped from the program when he thought he was
>    selecting a task.

yeah tasksel could use improvement, i never use it. i find
packages.debian.org the best package resource, if i need
something i go there to search for it(if apt-cache cant find
it), and install it. debian gets really easy once you start
to remember the names of the packages(and when someone
has done as many installs as i have you tend to remember virtually
all of them! ack)

>
>  * The dselect UI is completely cryptic.  I've been using
>    dselect for almost 5 years, and I still find it utterly
>    confusing and often get it into a state where I can't come
>    up with a legal configuration.

yeah, i stopped using dselect at leats 2 years ago. it was
pretty hellish my first debian install(hamm) in 98, i spent
i would say a good 4 hours selecting packages and resolving
conflicts before getting to the actual "copying/installing"
phase ..


>
>  * Package configuration asks pointless questions.  For
>    example, my neighbor spent a fair amount on the Debian site
>    trying to find out what lynx was and what should be used as
>    a default URL.  He finally asked me what to use for a
>    default URL. Asking cryptic questions like that is a waste
>    of the users time.

i think its very useful. debconf for example has the feature
which will only ask  you questions based on a certain priority,
set the priority high enough and it will never ask you those
"stupid" questions. even better debconf will email you when
it automatically does something which i find real slick.  one
thing i do not like about most other unix instalations is they
just copy the files they do not do any configuration, just the
basic, debian's configure-as-you-install i think is wonderful,
though i would like it even more if it saved the questions to
ask all at once.


>  * Setup/configure for a package fails and installer has to be
>    restarted. I counted NINE times through this cycle before
>    we gave up because it was unable to install the remaining
>    selected packages.

i haven't had this problem in ages. probably years. but i do
admit it can be troublesome when it does occur. in my experience
the problem is usually easily resolved by removing the offending
packages(with --force-depends if needed) and reinstalling them.


>
>  * After the install was "complete" (cycling through the
>    install wasn't getting any further) we had two permanently
>    broken packages: ldap-something and biff: apt-get -f
>    install was unable to fix the system. We had to purge both
>    of those with dpkg before we could get any further.


i take the fact your using woody or unstable, i would expect
this kind of behavior ESPECIALLY if your using the woody
install cd/disks. for my systems i always use the potato
installer and upgrade to woody later, sofar, 100% success
on probably 20 different systems.


>
>  * After installing using woody floppies, we don't have a
>    woody system, we have a _potato_ system!  Now we have to
>    manually edit apt's source list and do an update/upgrade to
>    get a woody system we wanted in the first place.
>    Downloading, installing, and configuring all those potato
>    packages just so they can be replaced with woody packages
>    is a waste of the user's time and bandwidth.

again, your using what i would consider a beta OS, it is
not released, so don't expect it to work that way, when
it is released it will work the way you 'like'. but till
then, stable is potato, and thats what many users should
be using. your specific complaint here is related to sources.list
with 'stable' which will be a non issue when woody becomes
stable.


>
>  * The SVGA X server was never installed, even though the
>    video board was detected correctly during install and X was
>    configured to use the SVGA server. That had to be installed
>    manually via apt-get.

if your using woody what are you using the SVGA X server for?
that is xfree86 3.x ..unless thats your intention to use
xfree3, its a fine product. i just would expect since your
running woody you'd want Xfree 4, which means xserver-xfree86
package.



>  * Only a partial set of Gnome packages was selected by
>    tasksel, so about a dozen more had to be installed manually
>    via apt-get.

i don't use kde or gnome so can't really comment here. my
desktop of choice is afterstep 1.6 currently, which i
recompile from potato sources on woody when i run a woody
machine.

>
>  * LILO was supposedly installed in the MBR of /dev/hda, but
>    the system won't boot from the hard drive.  This happens on
>    most of the Debian installs I've done -- I generally
>    install GRUB from sources, since Debian's LILO rarely works
>    for me.

i've rarely had lilo problems..very rarely. haven't used grub
much, but lilo has been real reliable for my systems at least.
i don't understand why the system would not boot off of /dev/hda


>
>  * With LILO broken, it's particularly annoying that the boot
>    floppy created during the install takes 15 minutes to load
>    the kernel from the floppy (I've seen this on multiple
>    different systems).  A boot floppy created manually using
>    rdev and dd takes about 20 seconds to load.

i haven't used the boot floppy that would be created by
the setup process, but you can always use the rescue disk
and specify a root=/dev/XXX to boot (thats what i do when
i need to boot from floppy).

>
>  * We had to purge GPM in order to get the PS/2 mouse to work
>    properly under X11.

this is my experience as well, and to me, expected behavior,
gpm has the port locked, X cannot use it when gpm has the port
in use. there is a way to use /dev/gpmdata, but i have never
done
this as i rarely use gpm(and when i do i stop it before going
to X).


>
> I've installed Debian dozens of times, and every time, there
> have been a whole series of hurdles like those.  The neighbor I
> was helping watched the whole process in amazement and asked
> how long it took to learn all the tricks required to install
> Debian.  I had to admit it took several days working on it full
> time.

sounds like a pretty nasty story to be honest, and i can see
how you and the neighbor could have these problems. good points
for sure ..debian is one of the more difficult systems to
get fully operational, it would be nice to see it made easier,
but not by losing its current flexibility. which i admit takes
a while to get used to, hell, i only started using update-alternatives
in the last week, and ive been using debian for 4 years, though
i don't know how long update-alternatives has been there. only
started using update-rc.d a couple weeks ago.

>
> I've installed quite a few other OSes:
>
>  SunOS/Solaris (from both tape and CD).
>  Coherent 286/386
>  Win3.1/95/98/NT/2K
>  Linux: Yggdrasil, Slackware, Redhat, Mandrake
>  Novell
>
> Debian is by far the most difficult.  The sad thing is it
> really doesn't need to be this difficult -- I'm convinced
> Debian users prefer it this way since it makes them feel
> superior to people who use flashy, graphical installers.

i don't think so. i think colin mentioned it, the installer
is usually only used once, its a small part of the overall
system so it is somewhat of a low priority for the developers
to work on. keep in mind debian folk aren't out there to
make a profit, aren't out there to gain market share, aren't
out there to attract users. debian(from what i've seen)
does not advertise, it's just there. its like those
hole-in-the-wall computer stores, nobody's heard of them
but they usually have the best stuff. sure it may take
a week to exchange a motherboard that they don't carry
anymore, but otherwise i'd rather shop there then at
dell/ibm/whatever. debian i would consider a
hole-in-the-wall distribution. hard to find, maybe hard
to install but once your there its great.

>
>> cds to have all the packages copied. Doing an installation
>> through a fast network or from DVD, Debian at least here is by
>> no means slower than the other systems I've installed, so
>> far...

one big advantage debian has over solaris, suse, winXX, novell
and possibly redhat and/or mandrake is network installs. and
no i don't mean get the media and mount it on a NFS share
and go, i mean point it at a ready-to-go http.us.debian.org
and install. or one of the many mirrors around the world.
or even better setup rsync and run your own mirror, since i
setup my own mirror at my company installs are lightning fast,
i can pull about 9mbyte/second from the local http server that
has the archive on it.

> Then you've had far, far better luck with Debian than I have.

i don't think its luck. i think it's experience. once you've
done the install enough times it gets easier with time. i
do remember lots of pains in the early days of my using
debian ..but now i try to use SuSE 7.3 and 8, or freebsd, or
redhat and i just can't use it. I am not used to it so i
can't be real productive in it. i've had some real bad
experiences with suse 8, but i still reccomend it for my
sister since it does things 'she needs' better then debian.

IMO, debian's biggest strengths:

- apt(& friends)
- being able to upgrade major revisions without a reboot(mostly due to
apt, but i think its good to point out). Upgrading a live system even. I
have not used another OS that does this like debian. freebsd comes close
but only if you go the source route which doesn't appeal much to me.
- packages.debian.org - PRICLESS. to be able to input a filename and find
what package it belongs to, or to search the package database, with suse
or redhat i find this difficult/impossible to do. i just tried putting
/bin/ls into rpmfind.net and it came back with zip.
- alternatives. debian provides several competing software packages in
the
system, such as postfix vs sendmail vs exim or xfree3 vs xfree4, many
other distros have this too but it doesn't seem to me as integrated
- menu system - PRICELESS. i sent a nice polite email to the suse folks
complaining that their afterstep rpm from their CD does not do even a
halfass job at makign a usable menu system for me with the SuSE programs.
I mean, it still had x11amp in the menus! that program has been dead for
probably 3 years! i asked them if they weren't going to put any effort
into it, to drop it. debian does an excellent job to provide menu entries
for probably every window manager(Though i have not tried every one).
- the mirror system. i don't know how many have seen redhat's mirror
system but it is just sickening. i mean random sites don't have certain
versions, or directory structure is hard to find(Without going to the
mirrors.html), no good naming scheme like debian(or kernel.org) has. and
i would kill for redhat http mirrors. maybe there are some out there
but i can't find em.
- everything is available online. i like to be able to install something
and not have to track down a CD like i do with SuSE. i point apt
to a network source and it gets it. especially useful for remote installs.
and when i mean online, i mean i don't have to do anything to take
advantage of network installs, they are on public servers ready to
use. this is only really useful for people that have fast
net connections. none of my systems have less then 1mbit internet
access.

and before anyone goes tor eccomend apt4rpm, at least the
version i tried on suse 8 didn't work so hot, it started
installing a bunch of stuff and i was real happy then some
weird rpm error spit out and apt refused to continue. so i
was forced to use suse's online updater. trying to troubleshoot
the problem didn't get me very far.

i only mentioned apt originally since it is, what sold my
boss a year ago. i came to a company that was (at least as
far as linux goes) 100% redhat(we had plenty of sun and hp
and aix and tru64 etc). now all of the production linux
servers are debian(except 1). thats about 25 servers i think.

debian still may have a ways to go on the install, but for
me the strengths listed above far outweigh the drawbacks of
the installer, which like colin(i think) said, is only really
used once per system.

now it helps a lot to have compadible hardware. I specifically
build all systems to maintain maximum compadiblity with
debian and the 2.2 kernel. i am at the point where if
the
hardware is real weird stuff, i won't touch it, even if its
free.

nate





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