Re: Bye Bruce

[George Bonser <grep@oriole.sbay.org>]

On Fri, 20 Mar 1998, Richard Sevenich wrote:

> My guess is that I've been instrumental (as an academician) in introducing
> Linux to perhaps 100 to 200 young people. I recommend Debian, but RedHat is
> slicker and more attractive. It's like watching your teenager start dating -
> they go for the attractive package. And RedHat is good, so I'm torn. I'm
> torn because I want these young folks to experience the instant
> gratification which underlies (undermines?) our culture. Otherwise, They'll
> just go back to watching TV.
> 

There is one major advantage of Debian over Red Hat.  Imagine that you
have two systems several miles away from you locked up in a computer room.
One runs Red Hat 4.2 and the other runs Debian 1.3.   Now you must upgrade
both systems to libc6 without console access and without any physical
access at all to either machine.  Which job would you rather do?

Red Hat has some really nice GUI desktop stuff that is not worth a pinch
of owl scat when it comes to maintaining a remote system over a slow link.
X over dialup sucks at best. THAT is where Debian shines. It is much
easier to keep a debian system current over the net than a Red Hat system.

Where Debian sucks is in a good default desktop configuration.  All the
hooks are there but there is no option to get a nice, polished, X desktop
if you want one.  


As for Bruce, I suppose everyone moves on to other things at some point.
Changes like these are a part of life and you must simply deal with them
and get on with it. The important thing is to stay focused.  I think
Debian is in a great position now to start cleaning up some of the ragged
edges that were left unattended to during the "compile the world"
conversion to libc6. The 2.1.90 kernel plugs right in to 2.0 so it looks
like there will not be a tremendous amount of work dealing with 2.2 when
it comes out this summer.

So far I would say that under the circumstances, the developers did a nice
job. There are some rough edges but there was also considerable pressure
to get nearly everything rebuilt for glibc.  Nice job, folks! I am happy
with what I have so far but I would hope that 2.1 will be more of a
cleanup than any bold new adventure.



George Bonser 
Just be thankful that Microsoft does not manufacture pharmaceuticals.
http://www.debian.org
Debian/GNU Linux ... the maintainable operating system.


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