Re: Raising Debian Awareness
debian parisc said:
> I sent this message already, but I'm not sure it got through.
>
> I'm trying to get the corporate suits to look at debian for some of our
> existing hp, sparc and intel platforms. What I need to understand is how
> it is being used out there.
>
> Also what you did in order to convince your business that debian GNU/Linux
> was right for a specific project. So I've set up a simply form at
> www.formdesk.com/linuxdaddy/debiansurvey that can be filled in. If you
> don't want to fill the online form in, then it is displayed below and you
> can just reply to the list (please trim your quotations if you do this).
the online form "isn't available anymore"
>
> Please CC me as I'm not on this list.
>
>
> 1. How do you use Debian? *
> Web *
> Mail *
> Firewall / Router *
> Print / File Server *
> Media Server (sound/music/video)
> Application Development *
> Documentation Server *
> Finanical Systems
> Database Backend *
> Other/Explanation
>
>
> 2. What platforms do you use Debian on? *
> i386 *
>
> 3. What environments do you operate Debian in?
> Standalone
> Networked *
>
> 4. Where do you use Debian? *
> Home *
> Work *
> 5. In what ways have you tried to achieve greater awareness of Debian in
> your company and with what results?
my last job, when I started all the linux systems were red hat. When
I ended, about 90% of the linux systems were debian(the remaining red
hat ones were running the same red hat, never upgraded/changed during
that time).
It wasn't hard to convince the company to switch. I started with 1
or 2 servers, my boss got to use them as well, I think apt-get is
really what made him make the plunge, he never stopped talking
about apt-get. I was the primary system admin, so I could pretty
much do what I wanted, the upper management didn't care what we
ran as long as it worked(and wasn't too costly of course).
benefits to running debian at a company:
- long release cycle(I'm still seeing people bitch about red hat's
new 1-year support cycle for their free products)
- apt-get - painless dependency resolving
- large package archive - I have a red hat 7.3 machine for testing and
I had to go to 3rd party stuff to get some basic things like perl modules,
Network UPS tools(the included version didn't work), and a few other
things, debian had it all(even an older version of the ups tools which worked)
- high standards for QA - it's very rare that a package upgrade causes a
problem(assuming the system is running stable)
- very conservative - packages are not optimized to the max(usually
tickles bugs in some software), older more tested versions preferred over
newer versions with fresh features
- security fixes often backported(common among some commercial distros,
less common on other non-commercial)
- very integrated(multiple choices for many kinds of software packages
like MTAs, web servers and installing the alternates usually integrates
well with the system, on the flipside integrating postfix with my freebsd
4.7 machine wasn't nearly as simple(not hard but not as flawless as debian)
- online upgrades. Debian is the only system I've used where you can do
live upgrades on the system. Even upgrading from 2.2->3.0 on a live system
(I did it on about 30 systems) was flawless. No rebooting. I was burned
last year by FreeBSD 4.4->4.6 upgrade, ipfw segfaulted until I rebooted with
a new kernel(!) To be fair i hear that red hat can do the same with the
3rd party apt-get, though of course officially apt-get isn't supported.
- upgrades don't change the kernel unless you explicitly tell it to.
last year I was burned by a SuSE 7.3->8.0 upgrade, the SMP 8.0 kernel
had ACPI in it which caused the system I upgraded(dual p2-233) to freeze
within 1 second of booting, took about 4 hours to track down & resolve the
issue.
- run your own company debian mirror and make installs go lightning
fast(upgrades too). Lots of rsync mirrors available.
probably others but..
reasons not to use debian in a company:
- no officially supported way of doing an automated install(that I know
of, yet). Never was an issue for me.
- most commercial apps are not targetted for debian, some won't even
run at all(e.g. last time i was playing with iPlanet stuff it segfaulted
immediately on debian potato)
- much less out of the box hardware support - your best off building your
servers around the OS instead of the OS around the servers(you also get
better reliability this way)
- Installation can be difficult for newbies, works best if you have either
patience, or a linux expert available for assistance. once installed
it runs forever
- maybe others...
now take the company out of the picture, why do I like debian(taken
from an email I sent to debian-user@ back in july? this is a straight
copy/paste so there may be some dupes.
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 to reccomend 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.
- the package archive. it's huge. it has so much stuff
there it would take me ages to try it all out. and the
sources are readily available in their original format.
i can download a source package from packages.debian.org
to a solaris system and compile it. i do this often when
the homepage/distribution site for something i want is
down, or i can't find it, or doesn't have the version
i want. and best of all, everything is on the mirrors.
it does not depend on the original distribution sites
such as freebsd's ports system(some like the way
the ports system works and i respect that, but i
for sure prefer apt-get over ports, that is apt-get
with the HUGE debian archives, my local mirror of
potato and woody(i386 only i think), takes about 25GB)
- stable. debian stable stays stable, that is major
revs are not permitted, you won't see(i hope) an upgrade
from kde2 to kde3 in the middle of a stable release.
some don't like this, but i consider it a major strength,
and uniqueness to debian.
- backported patches. i like how debian backports patches
to the stable tree. that builds on the point above. i only
wish there was backported kernel stuff.
thats it for me for now..
nate
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