Re: Firewall Debian vs SUSE
On Thu, 2 Dec 2004, Alfonso Mora wrote:
Any suggestions to help defending Debian solution?
I will not comment about suse, which I do not know well enough. The one
exception on this being that, after using the rpm package management a
while ago with RH, I never want to go anywhere near it again.
About debian, now. It is very easy to install a stripped down server with
debian. You have an exceedingly finely grained control over what to
install and what not, with clearly spelld out dependencies. Moreover, it
is simply beutiful to maintain such a stripped down Debian server. You can
apply security upgrades, when you need to, in a breeze. A Debian-based
firewall I maintain stays on for months at a time, essentially only being
rebooted when I want to upgrade the kernel. It is very easy to roll your
custom-configured kernels as debian packages, to make things even easier
to maintain. Once you learn a tiny bit about building debian packages from
source you will be able to roll out your custom versions of
kernel+netfilter utilities with the same set of patch-o-matic extensions
on both, as packages. This will enable you to quickly deploy and test any
upgrades and, if necessary, go back easily and cleanly.
To sum it up, people used to say that Debian is a bitch to install and a
dream to maintain. The "dream" part is still true, the first one is
absolutely false nowadays with the debian installer. Installing debian is
now more or less as easy as any other major distribution. And support via
mailing lists, bug reporting system etc. is simply outstanding. Important
bugs get fixed astoundingly quickly. I think this happens mostly because
all Debian developers "eat their own food".
Try it, it might take a little more work at the beginning but you will not
regret it.
Bye
Giacomo
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Giacomo Mulas <gmulas@ca.astro.it>
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