Re: changing to Debian from Mandrake
On Tue, 2001-10-30 at 18:50, 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:
I am a few months down the line from where are you now. I 've been
through Slackware, then RH52, RH62, MDK7.0, MDK8, Mandrake Cooker and
finally Debian unstable. I finally stopped booting into Mandrake two
months ago, and am not going back...
> * 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.
That is the only example of a package which is not the latest release in
unstable I can think of. Personally I don't know why it is so delayed,
maybe the maintainer is on a break and no-one else has bothered to
release it, or there are issues with it. I've found that there are far
more programs available in unstable than there are in Mandrake Cooker or
RedHat.
> * 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.?
"apt-get update" updates the local package list.
"apt-get upgrade" upgrades all installed packages to the latest release
"apt-get dist-upgrade" is more clever and is normally only used if you
a) are upgrade across distributions (stable -> testing,
testing->unstable, etc), or b) if you are running unstable and major
changes have taken place.
> 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.
I've found unstable to be very reliable. Before you upgrade have a
quick look at #debian on irc.debian.org or check the debian-devel
mailing list. If everything is okay, just run the dist-upgrade and
everything is fine! If a config file changes format or something, you
are offered choices about what to do and all existing files are backed
up.
As far as I recall, I've never been left with a system broken due to
config files after a dist-upgrade. Rarely a package is updated which
turns out to be broken (this happened to PAM recently, which broken
logins!), but these issues are fixed quickly and APT will cache old
packages so if everything really does break, just reboot in single-user
mode and reinstall the working versions.
> * Mandrake has very decent system configuration tools. I spent many
> years editing scripts and config files to setup up Linux machines,
> but it just takes longer when it comes to simple, basic tasks
> (adding a network interface, changing the runlevel configuration
> for daemons, etc.). Does Debian provide such tools (even if
> clearly they don't work for all situations)?
Many packages supply config tools when the install. exim, the default
mailer, is a good example. Basically there is a wizard which asks a few
questions and builds a config file which does the job.
However, I believe LinuxConf has been ported to Debian...
Regards,
Ross
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