Re: Talk on "Why Linux, Why Debian"
Manoj Srivastava dijo [Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 11:20:42PM -0600]:
> With less than a day to go, I have put my talk up on the net
> at http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/talk.html. Comments welcome.
Ok, my comments are:
> Feature set and Selection of Software
>
> Debian has over 10000 packages now. The chances are that anything you
> need is already packaged an integrated into the system, woth a person
> dedicated to keeping it (and a small number of other packages) upto
> date, integrated, and bug free.
s/woth/with/;
Under maintenance and administration:
> (...)
> This means that systems get updated in minutes, whereas the
> recommended way to do an upgrade on a BSD OS involves recompiling
> the entire system (at least, the "world").
Ummm... Not true, at least in OBSD. In OBSD you must recompile only
the affected parts (and it can be automated using a little tool I
wrote [1]). Of course, there are always gotchas. In OBSD, most
binaries (at least those not in /usr) are (were?) statically
linked. When patching libraries, you get the easy procedure on how to
patch the specific library, and then just a note recommending to
recompile the binaries... But anyway, that's a long shot from the
entire system.
I see that (at least up to this point) you didn't mention the
multitiered(?) approach of the BSDs - Once again, I speak mostly of
OBSD, as it is the only one I have really been involved in. In the
'maintenance and administrator' section, I think mentioning the ports
is also important: In OpenBSD, ports are officialy not part of the
system, and should a security problem appear in one of them, you are
on your own. Yes, they do update the ports tree, but it is of
secondary importance - And that can do a bit more than just to ruin
your day :-(
(Yes, I now see you mentioned this further down, in 'security and
reliability', but keeping the OS up to date fits better in this
part :) )
In 'Source builds':
> (...)
> nstead of having to go downloading, configuring, compiling and
> installing software machine per machine, without any sort of
> automated help ( I am not completely doing justice to emerge /
> portage here, but the point is clear, I hope ). I can emphasize this
> enough: for "serious"/production usage, binary distros are the best
> and only viable solution;
The Gentoo users/fans I know often remind people that although
emerge/portage are the best known tools in Gentoo, their system now
supports precompiled binaries, and most installations are done using
that. Yes, IMHO that makes Gentoo's supposed advantages self-defeated,
but anyway, they will argue about it :)
In 'security and reliability': You mentioned a link to OBSD's
http://www.openbsd.org/33.html - W^X and Propolice are also mentioned
in http://www.openbsd.org/34.html, and some people will call you names
for giving obsolete (and soon-to-be unsupported) links.
In 'scalability and performance':
> (...)
> FreeBSD 5.1 has very impressive performance and scalability. I
> foolishly assumed all BSDs to play in the same league
> performance-wise, because they all share a lot of code and can
> incorporate each other's code freely. I was wrong. FreeBSD has the
> second best performance of the BSDs and it even comes close to Linux
> 2.6. If you run another BSD on x86, you should switch to FreeBSD!
I think you meant that 'FreeBSD has the second best performance of the
tested systems', not of 'the BSDs', right? If it is the second best
BSD, why not recommending the first one? ;-)
(Remember to note that FBSD 5.1 is still not marked for use in
production servers - It has a release number, yes, but I understand
its status is closer to Sid than to Woody)
> OpenBSD 3.4 was a real stinker in these tests. The installation
> routine sucks (...)
Ummm... I would remove this first asseveration - Many people dislike
OBSD's installer, but many more think it really rocks. Simple, to the
point (although not as generic as ours, but that's not their goal),
quick, easy and consistent across platforms. This is too subjective to
just say it sucks.
Greetings, and best luck in your talk!
----
[1] Tepatche, http://www.gwolf.cx/soft/tepatche/
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