Re: Debian/RedHat at our university
On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Bernhard Dobbels wrote:
>
> I would like my uni to distribute Debian in stead of RedHat and for
> this, i would like some people to give reasons for this. It is a
> potential of 30.000 users, so i find this quite important. I wil bundle
> the answers and send them to the chairman of the linux-commitee.
>
> Am i right if i say that the uni can just rsync the cd-images, write
> them and sell them to the students for the price of writing the disks?
Correct.
Here is my list of reasons to use Debian:
- Package system manages dependencies and upgrades without
breaking anything. Single command line downloads and installs
any package, or upgrades to latest security fixes, or
upgrades to latest Debian.
- Nearly all software is packaged "offcicially"and quality
controlled. Most RPMs are broken or incorrectly packaged or designed
for a distribution other than the one you have; it's easy to break your
system with these. Even the official Red hat RPMs don't have the
quality of Debian packages; consider that Debian maintainers usually
use the software themselves.
- Mailing list help is better
- Distribution is more stable in general than any other.
- All the software in the 'main' section is guaranteed to be
distributable and usable for any purpose; no other distribution
makes this guarantee. That means you have to read the license for every
package and be sure you can include it on your CD. With Debian,
just use the official CD and you're safe.
- Small touches: backspace/delete work right in most apps,
for example. There are tons of little things like this that
Debian gets right.
Havoc
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