Re: Debian Questions - Newbie-ish
On Mon, 14 Sep 1998, Mason Loring Bliss wrote:
: What I'd really like is a "Debian for NetBSD People" guide, but, failing
: that, maybe a couple kind souls out there can answer some questions I've
: got.
:
: Note: I'm not running Debian yet - I'm running NetBSD-current - but I
: think I'm going to give Debian a try for a while. I'll clear out a mostly
: unused partition and have at it. :)
:
: My questions:
:
: 1) Once I've got everything installed in a basic way, how do I build and
: install the world myself? In NetBSD, it's as easy as "cd /usr/src ; make
: build". What's the Debian equivalent?
There isn't one - most Debian packages come precompiled. This makes it
easier for new users to install things. (Most people fresh from a
Windows environment get a little concerned if the first thing that
happens is a few hours of compilation). This also means that one may
easily install a system without installing development tools, which may
be impractical or impossible due to space or performance concerns.
Having said that, every Debian package has an equivalent source package.
Generally you use dpkg-source and dpkg-buildpackge to manipulate these.
: 2) What would you folks recommend as a boot manager that'll seamlessly
: choose between NetBSD and Debian, letting me set the default arbitrarily?
Hmm. I think bootpart from BSD will do this, and I'm pretty sure LILO
will. I've used LILO to dual boot Windows and Linux, and bootpart to
dual boot DOS and BSD. I never have done exactly what you want to do
...
: 3) Is there an equivalent to the NetBSD practise of a nightly sup of
: current sources?
Yes and no. If you're using the ftp or nfs methods for dselect (the
somewhat fussy front end to dpkg, the Debian package manager), it's easy
to install the latest version of package x. However, as I noted, these
are generally precompiled.
: 4) How "automated" is the Debian package system? For instance, NetBSD will,
: if presented with a package that requires something which doesn't exist
: on the current system, ftp the package sources and build the package, etc.
: If *that* package requires something else, it'll recursively snag everything
: needed, ftping everything by itself and requiring no user intervention. Does
: the Debian package system do this?
Full dependency checking (but no compilation required!) This is what
attracted me to Debian in the forst place.
: 5) Is tcpwrappers a standard part of the system? What about IP-NAT? UUCP?
Yes. No (user configuration required). Yes (of course, user
configuration is again required).
: Thanks in advance for the help. If I like Debian enough after using it for
: a while, I'll give serious thought to switching over to it as my primary OS.
: (I'll likely end up running it on on an i386 and a mac68k, FWIW.)
If you're a real BSD bigot (no slight intended) you may be distressed by
some of the System V falvor of Linux, such as rc directories for
runlevels. Of course, there is a Debian package (file-rc) to make
things more BSDish.
I hope this addresses a few of your concerns.
--
Nathan Norman
MidcoNet 410 South Phillips Avenue Sioux Falls, SD
mailto:finn@midco.net http://www.midco.net
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