RE: Debian vs. Red Hat
Wayne,
> It's to anyone, I've mainly used Debian, because of it's
> stability, but our
> ISP has a contractor who's opinion is "Red Hat's the best,
> thats why they
> are so popular." I want to dipute this, but I need more than just my own
It is my experience most people feel whatever they are familiar with is the
best for situation. I don't think I know *that* much about debian. I do
know .deb is worlds better than .rpm. When it comes to debian, you are
talking to the choir.
You ISP just has familiarity with red Hat. This may make it a better
solution for them. I am biased towards debian, but from an ISP (sysadmin)
standpoint debian is great at installing/maintaining packages.
In my opinion debian could be unfamiliar territory as it doesn't readily
offer graphical configuration utilities like RedHat. I find these to be
more of a hindrance. They lead to the windows mentality of "What just
happened? I don't know either but is works now!".
The install of debian was (is?) pretty painful. Compared to redhat, it is
monumental for the uninitiated. I recommend Storm or Corel for the
installation challenged. I think their install easily rivals Redhat. It
can't get much easier than Corel. Storm is not far behind. Both
(especially Storm) offer apt-get (auto install and maintenance of packages)
with a high degree of debian compatibility.
There are curious parts of debian. Debian has a religious issues with
/usr/local. Some packages really want to be there (I.e. apache). This can
easily be worked around. You just have to watch when you read documentation
which assumes the software was installed in the /usr/local directory. Some
publicly available scripts must be modified as well. All in all, very
workable. Just a curious departure.
For what it's worth, I have some friends who use redhat. When it comes to
accomplishing tasks such as setting up a mail server, I can run circles
around them. Debian is the finest server I have seen with support (this
list server) that would make Gates blush. Recently, I installed sendmail.
I was up and running in less time than it would have taken me to find and
download the .rpm for Redhat.
Just my biased two cents.
Do keep in mind, I administer my own machines for my own consulting
business. If I didn't find debian to be better, it would be out of here
yesterday. I don't get paid for administration of the servers. They are
expected utilities for a technical company such as mine. I have tried
Redhat, Mandrake and Slackware. Debian is the hands down winner for me. It
simply costs less to operate.
Ironically, I was very happy with NT server. It was stable enough for my
needs. I couldn't get Frontpage server extensions to work properly under
IIS with multiple domains. It started costing me money to play with it. I
always had a debian mail server. I installed Apache/frontpage and haven't
looked back. Sad that frontpage works better under apache than IIS. Go
figure.
--
Paul McHale
Work: 937-320-5495 Double E Solutions
Mobile: 937-371-2828 1435 Edenwood Dr
Fax: 413-215-3232 Beavercreek, Ohio 45434
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