Re: Is Debian the last OS ? (Long reply)
At 12:48 2000/07/31 +0900, you wrote:
Adam Scriven <scriven@lore.com> writes:
> So, for him to go to 2.2, and get the upgrades that he wants, he
> needs to reinstall. He has no problem with this, and I've recommend
> Debian, but no matter how "stable" the frozen version is, it IS
> STILL frozen, and not the officially released version, so he's not
> comfortable switching to it.
Upgrading from slink to potato is a breeze. Besides potato is rumored to
become stable in August.
That's good news, anyway.
I've been running and updating potato regularly for about a year without
any major trouble.
And I've been running it for 6 months, probably.
Some minor hiccups, but nothing I couldn't handle.
I guess the biggest hickup was caused by updating to emacs20-20.7. It
screwed my gnus setup, but installing the seperately packaged gnus package
fixed everything. Note, these ripples were caused by changes within
potato and had nothing to do with upgrading from slink.
I understand, but that's partially my point. Potato was still changing,
but to change from 2.0.36 RH to 2.0.36 Debian doesn't make any sense to
him, since he's got his RH system working just as he wants, and he
understands it enough to be relatively comfortable with it.
Has he ever tried a RedHat x.0 release? From what I heard these are as
buggy as, likely even buggier than, Debian's frozen releases. It is just
what an organization is prepared to call an official release.
I don't think he's ever tried a X.0 release, but that's just a question of
timing.
Living in rural Ontario there are no computer stores anywhere that carry
Linux, so he buys stuff when he comes up here to visit me, or if I bring
stuff down to him.
As soon as it's available in stores (or I get my CD burner), I'll bring him
a copy of the potato CD, but that'll be a stable version of potato (or
_very_ close too, from a release schedule POV).
> So that leaves him with RedHat, since he understands it.
Sounds like he doesn't want to (or can't) put in some effort.
He puts in as much effort as he can afford, for a hobby. He uses it for
checking e-mail, he's looked into getting completely rid of Windows and
using Linux exclusively (and he would if he could find a couple of
replacements for windows programs that he likes).
Soon he'll be delving into the wonders of kernel re-compilation, and yes,
when people get over that hurdle, it's much easier to do certain
things. My point was, and continues to be, that Debian, with the slow
release schedule, has had people avoid it. They're looking for an
officially released version, with the options that they need.
He's perfectly happy to stay with 2.0.36. Diald works, he understands his
system enough that it does what he wants, but he recognizes that it would
do more things, and it would do the same things better, if he were to use
some of the features he's heard about in 2.2, but officially Debian doesn't
support it yet, even though it's been out for a very long time.
Thanks again!
Adam
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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