Re: changing to Debian from Mandrake
Michael Kaminsky wrote:
> * 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 maintainer is on his honeymoon, apparently. It's not
impossible for someone else to put out an update on his behalf, but I
guess nobody has found it to be an urgent thing to do. The packages
needed to get the most recent gnucash package running are available from
my package archive at http://crdic.ath.cx/debian .
In general, I have found that Sid (Debian unstable) usually gets
packages for new releases of important software pretty quickly. We had
emacs21 within 24 hours of its release, IIRC. And it worked, too.
> 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.
Yes, looks like guppi needs an update. But according to the gnumeric
package, gnumeric isn't dependent on guppi; it's only "suggested". I
haven't observed gnumeric having any problems because of the lack of a
current guppi, but then again I don't use spreadsheets often and I don't
know when I last tried to use Guile or graphs in gnumeric.
> * 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'm not sure why people are confused about this. I just started using
Debian (converting from Red Hat 6.2) earlier this year, and I've had no
problems with apt+dselect aside from dselect's slightly weird interface.
> 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.
Not in my experience. I installed Potato, then added the sources.list
lines for Woody, ran dselect and updated, let it install everything it
wanted to. Then added the sources.list lines for Sid, ran dselect again.
There were probably a few cases where I had to choose between
conflicting packages, but it was no big deal, as I recall.
One trick (which I should have thought of before going through this
process myself) is to start out with a very minimal Potato installation,
upgrade that to Woody, then to Sid (if you want to go all the way to
unstable), and only then, once your minimal setup is all upgraded,
install everything else you want. That makes the upgrade path much
easier, and the upgrades obviously go faster.
Craig
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