Re: changing to Debian from Mandrake
On Tue, 30 Oct 2001, Michael Kaminsky wrote:
> I'm been using Mandrake for the past couple of years, and now I'm
> considering switching to Debian; but, I have some concerns. I
> consider myself a fairly experienced Linux user and use Linux for all
> my computing needs (devel, digital camera stuff, laptop stuff ,text
> processing, networking, etc.). I would like input on the following:
Slackware's 7-year reign over my systems ended recently, so maybe my
comments will apply to your situation.
>
> * One reason I moved to Mandrake from Redhat (from Slackware) is that
> the packages are extremely up-to-date. Even the unstable version of
> Debian seems sorely lacking. Mandrake seems to put out RPMs within
> 1-2 days of the upstream developers. There are still no Debian
> packages for software I use regularly that's been out for > 1 month
> (according to the debian web page package search form).
> Example: gnucash.
The gnucash package is pretty far behind, but it is an anomoly. Most
packages are up-to-date. Mozilla and Galeon, for example, are usually
available 1-2 days after release, and these are very difficult packages to
build.
ALSA is another package that is screwed up in unstable but you can blame
ALSA developers for that, not Debian.
> Also, in some cases the package I want is up-to-date, but not
> all of its dependencies. Example: gnumeric. Version 0.72 requires
> a version of guppi for which there is no Debian package.
Not really true. Gnumeric doesn't depend on Guppi, it suggests it. You
can install Gnumeric 0.72 today and it works fine, although without
graphs. Guppi 0.40 came out only a little over a week ago so I expect
packages really soon.
This will probably break gnucash, though :)
> * Apt + dselect seem very powerful, efficient if you use them together
> correctly. From the mailing lists, though, "correctly" seems to be
> a matter of confusion (or perhaps just preference). RPMs don't cut
> it for bleeding edge multiple-dependency upgrades (as you all know
> well). This reason is key to my wanting to change over. Have the
> people who wrote these systems outlined their correct usage in a
> FAQ/manpage/etc.?
I have never seen a document of dselect best practices, but that is a good
idea. After installing the system, I haven't had to use dselect at all.
> Also, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to upgrade to testing or
> unstable once you install. From the mailing lists, it seems like
> magic one-line commands such as "apt-get dist-upgrade" leave much
> manually fixing left to do. Apparently one can live mostly in
> testing but grab select packages from unstable by configuring
> "pins" in an apt_preferences file. Are there simple instructions
> for doing so? Again, people on the mailing lists seem confused
> and/or have varied opinions on how the mechanism is supposed to
> work.
In my experience installing three machines, the best way to install
unstable is to install 2.2r3 with as few packages as possible. For
example, it should be possible to install a system that includes only apt
and related packages, bash, init, and libc. Then once your very minimal
system is up, you can dist-upgrade painlessly to unstable. Now, using
dselect, you can select all the software that you want/need on your
system.
The most difficult thing seems to be that XFree86 packages don't have
strong dependencies and have some ordering requirements that aren't
expressed via apt. For example, it is possible to completely install
GNOME without an X server (for which you need xserver-xfree86 package) and
you'd better install xfonts-base before you install any other X package or
your fonts will not work right (also make sure that you install debconf
first or you may miss some important questions).
These requirements aren't shown to the user and aren't expressed
programmatically so they can cause problems for new Debian users.
-jwb
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