Re: Why Debian
Hi
On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 11:11:07AM -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Mihamina RKTMB wrote:
> >
> >1°)
> >I use Debian over Ubuntu only for servers.
> >I co-manage more or less 200 servers (6 persons team)
> >Keeping "supported" would be a PITA with the 6 month release schedule.
> >One could always advise to stay with LTS, but that would be
> >equivalent to Debian.
> >
> >2°)
> >I have to self package (for internal use) several pieces of
> >software and I found Ubuntu introduces several changes in
> >packaging I dont like. I'd rather stick with the bare
> >http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/
> >
>
> Sounds like my situation, but with a lot fewer servers. I'm still
> running Squeeze on a couple of machines - stability is fine.
>
> I find that there are a few things I always have to install from
> source - the packaged versions are at best out-of-date, and
> sometimes simply don't work (but the latest source builds just fine
> on older releases of Debian - go figure).
I would suggest raising a bug on the packages in question. Also
investigate using backports for this.
For the (admittedly rare) cases where this has happened to me,
building a debian package using the up-to-date software has been
exceedingly easy - especially if you have a local (company-wide?)
debian repository where you can put your own debs in.
>
> But this does raise a question: Given that (IMHO) apt is by far
> Debian's best selling point.... If one is managing systems where a
> LOT (even most, or all) software is built from source - is Debian
> still the best distribution. Is there a better distro for managing
> source-based in installs from upstream (and I'm not talking Gentoo,
> where Portage is a packaging system for source code - I'm talking
> semi-automatic management and updates from upstream source. Any
> thoughts?
You'll still end up with some "package" concept - not necessarily
expressed as debian packages, but similar.
For "little" things, using puppet, chef, cfengine or similar is quite
useful for installing software.
--
Karl E. Jorgensen
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