Re: Debian and Redhat - are most linux users missing the point?
On Sat, 27 Feb 1999, Ed Cogburn wrote:
>
> First, I think a *lot* of the Debian users are using it at least
> in part based on 'political' issues such as Debian being the only
> non-commercial distribution (myself included). For one thing, as
> another poster mentioned, a lot of the press that Debian gets
> explicitly points out its noncommercial, volunteer-based status,
> which means a lot of people who are sensitive to that kind of
> politics, are coming to Debian.
That is fine but you are never going to get too far beyond personal use if
your claim to fame is a political issue. 90% of computer use is in
business. In that application, technical issues are the main criteria.
They are not worried about the belief of the programmer so much as they
are the performance of the program.
> Second, and perhaps most importantly, Debian's 'politics' have a
> lot to do with its technical superiority. Debian releases only
> when the dist is ready and not a day before. Deb can do this
> because the developers aren't working on a management-imposed
> release deadline. Deb is basically rock-solid, with a package
> manager thats technically superior to RPM.
I fail to see how the differences between RPM and dpkg have anything to do
with politics. Both are licensed under the same license. You are correct
in stating that Debian is more stable on initial release. THe cure for
that in Red Hat shops is to never upgrade to ?.0 ... always wait for .2
Debian's superiority is process related, not so much content. The fact
that I can upgrade a machine over the net while logged into the target
machine over the network through a firewall that does not pass X is a big
advantage. The way debian sticks to standards for building packages that
ensure that all the packages will integrate together is better ... also
has nothing to do with politics. When/if debian decides to eliminate key
packages or libraries for political reasons (almost did this with pine)
that make the distribution a pain to use in the real world then it is time
to build a different distro using the Debian process but with different
content.
In other words, the value is the process and not the content.
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