Re: new and needing help
brent morrison wrote:
dear kent
all of my hard drive is given to mandrake im not sure what version it
was they gave me of debian he said it was the newest one out and if it
hard to put both on like it is now i can just kill mandrake and
install debian i just dont know anything about this
I mean is debian a good system? i dont really like mandrake but its
because i dont understand it i think i just dont know what to do with it
well i do im interested in internet security but is this a safe system
for me in that profession?
brent
My understanding of Mandrake is that it's a souped-up version of Redhat.
I've only spent a few hours on a Mandrake box, and therefore know very
little about it. However, both RH and Mandrake use the .RPM packaging
system, whereas Debian uses the .DEB packaging system. Having
experienced both, I can say that the .DEB format is by far the better
system.
As a general rule, users of other distros who find Debian tend to stick
with it and never turn back. That says quite a bit.
Redhat, Mandrake, and others, are typically geared to the Linux newbie,
and tend to do things "for" you, and often "behind your back". Debian on
the other hand tends to be somewhat more difficult to set up (although
the most recent release is greatly improved).
Debian also seems to be the most "free", as in "Free Speech". The others
tend to be more careless with the principles of Open Source/Free
Software. This has led to "issues", however. For example, for quite a
while Debian did not include KDE as part of the distro, because KDE used
a toolkit that didn't fit meet the Free Software standard. This was an
inconvenience, but I would prefer principles over convenience.
Also, because Debian doesn't have a "market deadline" like some of the
commercial varieties of Linux, there's not a lot of pressure to release
a distro before it's ready. It seems that considerably more care goes
into making Debian stable than what goes into some of the other distros.
As a result, Debian just generally Works. Reliably. Consistently.
Part of this insistence on quality also means that Debian tends to the
security issues better than other distros as well. With other distros
you need to get a "third-party" hardening package to tie up all the
loose ends of security; this is pretty much a moot point with Debian
since Debian maintainers seem to take more care with security issues and
have already "hardened" the system. That's not to say that security is
not something to be concerned with, but it appears that Debian has far
less security issues than other distros (and especially that "other"
popular OS).
If you don't understand Mandrake, you won't understand Debian. That's
not to say you can't learn it (or Mandrake). But it is definitely a
different world than Macintosh or Windows.
One final major plug for Debian. This user list. Redhat may have the
shelf space on the bookstores, but all those books pretty much say the
same thing and never quite answer the question you're asking. This list
on the other hand is as available as your email client, and often puts
you in touch with the developers and maintainers of the Debian GNU/Linux
packages. It's a tremendous resource, and from some of the comments I've
read, it far exceeds the quality of even the paid support from some of
the other distros.
In summary, if you're going to learn Linux, and want to learn it right,
and want to become competent, stick with Debian. If you merely want to
play around with Linux for a couple of days to say you've "been there,
done that", you're just as well off to stick with Mandrake.
If you're willing to blow away Mandrake, just boot off the Debian CD;
when it gets to the stage of partitioning your hard drive, just delete
the existing Mandrake partitions. Then continue loading Debian. You can
find some good instructions for installing Debian at:
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/#new-inst . You can find all sorts
of good reading at http://www.debian.org. For example, you can search
the mail archives (and see this message - well, in a few days maybe) at
that site by clicking on "Mailing List Archives" in the left-hand pane.
Once there, you can click on "search" in the "Browse or search the
archives" sentence at the top of the page and do a keyword search. For
example, you could search for "partition", and probably find lots of
questions and answers relating to partitioning your hard drive. You can
also post to this mail list for further info (but don't get your
feelings hurt when someone tells you to RTFM - Read the Fine Manual; in
other words, list members sometimes get tired of answering the same
questions over and over, so at a minimum do a search in the mail
archives before posting a question that you think might have been
answered before. Also, when posting, try to be specific in the subject
line, such as "How to make Debian & Mandrake co-exist" or "Mandrake?
Debian? Both?", etc. This allows list members to more easily
sort/bypass/respond to messages as their expertise allows.
Welcome to Debian. I hope you enjoy your journey.
Kent
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