Re: Debian and Redhat - are most linux users missing the point?
I've just gotten my mail down, so sorry for the lateness of this :)
A Short Linux History (by me)
In 1992/3 I was looking at getting myself a new operating system, well
after chatting to a couple of friends, I heard about "debian linux", now
I hadn't heard of linux before so when I found it was a free operating
system, I was wrapt!
Anyhow, I went out and bought the Infomagic CD-set (I didn't have internet
access then), and well, lo and behold, there was a number of different
distributions on the CD! Well, I recognised debian, so I attempted to
install it *BAM* problems. First thing I created the install disks like
the documentation suggested, and booted up, well, it installed the base
system, then said something about not being able to find the debian cdrom.
Well, here's the fun bit, it seems that due to the fact that I own (yep
still own it) a cm205(MS) cdrom drive I would be unable to get the cdrom
usable under linux (something to do with the driver code not being
released for people to program a driver for it under linux)... hmm.. so I
put the cd's on the shelf for a few years...
1997 I got myself an IDE cdrom drive (notice the delay, yep, I'm always
broke!). So I dusted off the infomagic CDroms and tried installing debian
again, well, infomagic hadn't provided all the BASE packages for debian,
so I was pretty stuck here, I had a half-installed system... hmm...
(couldn't even get on the internet). So I deleted and tried to install
redhat, well it installed perfectly... I sense a kick-back here... so on a
whim I tried slackware off the cd's... again they "forgot" to include all
the packages for slackware... anyhow I ran redhat for a while, but got
tired of it (not enough options, little availability of word proccessing
software, etc..) so I left off on linux for a while..
January 1999 have net account will download!
At the beginning of the year I'd gotten very bored with everything and
decided to attempt to download and install debian off the net. This time
things went great. To summarize the good points I have found with debian
:-
1) Package list is very large, and so provides a large amount of options
for its users.
2) Software is free. This is good for me who is broke.
3) dselect. Yep, I think dselect is very good. requires a little fine
tuning to me (like search facility, faster loading of package lists, etc),
but pretty decent job.
4) availability of support, I've been able to get almost all of my
questions answered via this mailing list.
Now, I have a few problems with it.
1) No "IDE" for the compiler.
2) Still no support for my old CDROM drive (I have a new
computer/cdrom/etc. but I still have the old machine, and would like to
use the old cd in the old system).
3) No documentation on how to load/use the original programs that loaded
when installing. That is, can I load again the program that allowed me to
setup the modules??? If so where is it? Those programs are very helpful
for initial installation, but sometimes (as in my case) you might change
your mind later on and want to use that program to go over something
again.
Basically of all the distributions of Linux, I prefer Debian over the
others for installation and use, mainly because it is (to me anyway) easy
to use, and decent installation of the packages.
I aplaud the developers of Debian, but I really would like to see an "IDE"
(Integrated Development Environment for those who don't know what I mean)
for the compiler. I'd do what I could to fix any problems I had with
installation, etc if I had one. I never liked (even under DOS) doing
the code-compile-run-fix_code-compile-run cycle manually. Sure once I've
gotten into the swing of how it works I'd be happy to ditch the "IDE" but
until then, I guess I'll have to do all my coding under DOS/WIN98 (other
partition)... This is Linux's main failing to me (all distributions, not
just debian you'll notice).
Regards,
Peter Ludwig.
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