Re: Debian Vs RedHat
<quote who="Stuart Krivis">
> I've never felt RPM was as good as DEB. RPM-based distros just
> don't seem to be as maintainable over the long haul.
>
> Personally, I have issues with a binary-based distribution. I am
> enamored of the *BSD ports system and buildworld. :-)
while ports serve a certain purpose, i much prefer debs
and apt-get over ports any day. main reasons is on most
systems i don't want/need dozens of devel packages installed.
i also like the idea that debian(and redhat too) keeps
the sources on their own distro sites, whereas the vast
majority of ports that ive seen rely on the original
distribution site. i am starting to like freebsd(have
been using it off and on for a couple years, deployed
my first set of production servers last month running
freebsd). another big complaint against freebsd(and openbsd,
haven't tried BSD/OS or netbsd). is the apparent
lack of effort put into the packages. config files
are left generic, most packages do not provide init
scripts of any kind, little documentation on how
to get things to start(luckily i had a basic idea
on how to use the daemons i installed as ive used
them on other platforms). infact default installs
appear to leave most service packages completely
non functional until you rename a bunch of config
files(most come with extention of .sample). i
also don't like that packages install all to
/usr/local. i can see how ports would do this
but i would expect software installed via
sysinstall to go to /usr
i avoid ports whenever i can. i use sysinstall to
install binary packages, but that can be a pain
because the search function does not work on any
of the installs i've done. and it has to re download
the INDEX file everytime i use it, even if its only
been 30 seconds since i last used it.
that said, i love freebsd's ability to work in
bridged mode, DUMMYNET for traffic shaping sofar
works great, i like ipfw and ipf MUCH MUCH more
then ipchains(wish someone would port one or both
to linux 2.2). the basic install has full support
for large files(i was shocked to see i could
make 8GB files). though the kernel is big!
which is odd to me. my kernel(with a decent
amount of stuff compiled in) is 2.2MB.
compared to about 700KB for a full blown
linux 2.2 kernel. it doesn't bother me i just
think about some times ive seen people complain
about the size of the linux kernel ..
i attempted to deploy OpenBSD firewalls but
the eepro driver was not stable on openbsd
for the dual port chipset my systems had.
openbsd would panic after a few minutes
under nil load doing NAT. openbsd
mailing list never responded to my questions.
i later deployed an openBSD nameserver and
it ran for about 6 months till i attempted
to upgrade it to 2.9 (from 2.8) and the
upgrade tried to compile a bunch of crap
i didn't want and didn't have installed
like kerberos. that and the compile bombed
everytime(memory error or something). being
900 miles away i could not install off hte CD.
so i had someone local wipe it out and put
debian on it. least i don't have to reboot
it to upgrade(OBSD 2.8-2.9 reccomended/required
recompiling the kernel and rebooting
before upgrading the system itself)
my freebsd server deployments are soley in
the network monitoring area. each system
is starting out with a single quad port
ethernet card(Znyx) to sniff traffic.
i will eventually upgrade them to have
2 or 3 quad port cards to sniff at other
locations on the networks. the cards operate
in bridged mode doing sniffing/optional firewalling
and optional traffic shaping. working
flawlessly sofar.
now i am waiting for freebsd 4.5 to come out
to see if there are any related horrors to
upgrading it like there was with openbsd.
hoping there is not.
nate
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