Re: How would I get debian unstable?
On Thu, Jun 05, 2008 at 10:26:55AM -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 05, 2008 at 01:34:24PM +0100, A J Stiles wrote:
>
> > The other distributions with a reputation for being "hard" (because they
> > involve understanding, if not how things work under the bonnet then that
> > there *is* a bonnet with moving parts under it, and sometimes doing things by
> > hand without the benefit of slick graphical "wizards" to allow you to select
> > one of a number of pre-set configurations; some people seem conditioned to
> > think that there is something intrinsically hard about reading text and
> > typing on a keyboard) are Gentoo and Slackware.
>
> I think many people don't realize that installing a system is hard. I
> think most computer users would have difficulty installing windows if
> their system hadn't come with it pre installed.
One of my systems had trouble with Windows ME after a routine hardware
upgrade. I've never been able to get Windows running on it since,
except in maintenance mode.
Linuxes, on the other hane have been running wonderfully for ages,
before and after the upgrade.
-- hendrik
>
> > Slackware is very "old-skool" (though it has up-to-date packages), and tends
> > to stay even further out of your way than Debian does.
Sometimes "out of your way" means there's no bridge, so the fact that
the bridge is broken can't be a problem. But just put on your hip
waders and cross the swamp -- no problem.
> This extends to not
> > having a package management and dependency resolution system of its own. I
> > tried it, and it didn't really seem to offer anything that Debian didn't.
> >
> > Gentoo is famous for tweakability. Instead of pre-compiled packages, Gentoo
> > packages contain Source Code and automated build instructions; they are
> > compiled right on your machine to suit your machine, according to various
> > optimisation flags specified by you. Again, I tried it; and it also didn't
> > seem to offer anything special over Debian apart from the fact of there being
> > no more need for -dev packages. It was a good learning experience, though:
> > I'd seriously advise anyone who is thinking of creating their own GNU/Linux
> > distribution to do an install of Gentoo from Stage One, even if you don't
> > plan to base your distro from Gentoo.
>
> If they don't have -dev packages, that means every system is wasting
> space on header files that it probably doesn't need.
>
> I have never tried gentoo, since it is fundamentally the wrong way to do
> a system. I have built stuff from source before, and I really don't
> have any need to waste cpu cycles on doing what the package maintainer
> already did.
It does reduce package-dependency hell somewhat -- sunce only
sourse-code compatbility is a problem, not the additional dependencies
that come from linking with particular versions of binary libraries.
But upgrades, like diamonds, are forever.
>
> > In all fairness to Slackware and Gentoo, I am quite sure that had I been using
> > either of these first and dallied with Debian, I would have gone back to what
> > I knew. And if Ubuntu had been around when I lost patience with Debian, then
> > that's what I would have tried next. If I'd tried Ubuntu sooner, I'm not
> > even sure I'd ever have reverted to Debian; except maybe for GUI-free
> > servers.
>
> I started with SLS, went to slackware, then redhat, and finally Debian.
I started with slackware, went through RedHat, Suse, Mandrake, and ended
up with Debian. The transition to Debian happened when the commercial
systems put in so many security and configuration tools that I was
unable to get networking to work at all. I switched to Debian on the
advice of a janitor at my local church. Best distribution switch I ever
made. I don't think I'll ever go back.
> At no point did I ever want to go back, since each time was a vast
> improvement.
>
> > BTW. If you want to see real elitism, try hanging around with a bunch of SuSE
> > users -- they are all boss-eyed from looking down their noses at everyone
> > else! ;)
>
> I installed SuSE once. That didn't last long (the installer alone
> pissed me off).
And SuSE support turned out to be nonexistent when I tried it. it
turned out that the store had sold me an obsolete version (it does take
time for these boxes to get through the warehouses, apparently) and they
wouldn't support it. I wasn't even able to contact anyone to get them
to exchange it for a newer version. The only contact address was a
support emailo, which bounced everything on hearing my serial number, an
wouldn't reply without it.
That was it for SuSE, as far as I was concerned.
-- hendrik
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