Re: Is Debian the last OS ?
Mark Suter wrote:
> Folks,
>
> How common is the "Debian last" practice, that is, try other
> distributions (including non-GNU/Linux) and then come to Debian
> to stay?
<cut> <snip>
While the "Debian last" practice is probably the most common way that
users become "Debian" users, it's in my opinion the poorest.
When I decided that I had had enough of "Gates garbage", I gathered
as much information as I could about the different distributions and
found that the GNU concept was being followed most closely by Debian -
that was enough for me. So I placed an order at CheapBytes - Hamm had
just been released.
Meanwhile I bought a linux book that contained a copy of Caldera and
tried to get that running. A week later my Debian disks arrived
(Caldera was still not running). I stuck the Debian 2.0 CD in my
drive, loaded Hamm (it ran right out of the box - so much for the
"hard to install" myth), and I haven't looked back since.
Since that time I've loaded Red Hat, Caldera, Mandrake and Slakeware
on spare hard drives just to see how well they perform. I found that
none are really any easier than Debian, they just have fewer choices
and packages. I've also watched co-workers pay good money for RedHat
and Mandrake and never get them to run correctly on their system. Try
convincing them that they're easy for first time users.
I guess what I'm saying is that anyone that's advising newbys to start
with other distributions and then switch to Debian are actually doing
them a disservice. If you don't think so just scan the archives of
this list and see how many questions there are like "on my (RedHat,
Mandrake, SuSe etc.) box <something> worked perfectly. Why doesn't
Debian work right". The answer in virtually every case is that Debian
does *work right*, but the user is trying to use a non-debian
non-GNU method, configuration, or tool.
IMHO if it's not GNU and/or it's not Debian dump it.
*Debian First*
John
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