On Sat, Nov 09, 2002 at 07:11:18PM -0600, ZephyrQ wrote: > ...and I need some feedback, if you please. > > I'm coming from SuSE 8.0 and have been increasingly frustrated with the > direction SuSE is going (first installed SuSE 5 years ago) and several > have suggested that Debian was the way for me to go. I am looking for > the following: > > --ability to recover when occasional problems happen (without having to > reinstall to recover my X desktop) You can certainly recover from any non-hardware fault if you're willing to put in enough effort... > --gnome friendly (SuSE is increasingly marginalizing gnome in favor of > KDE) Debian Woody has GNOME 1.4 currently; if you want GNOME 2 you can try moving to Debian Sarge (aka testing). > --decent community to help out with problems (which is why many > suggested you guys, and why I subscribed to the list...) Right here. As Baloo said, if you're polite, then people will help you to the best of their ability. > --ability to install software easily (I don't mind the > configure/make/make install dance except that SuSE sometimes puts stuff > in weird places--difficult for me to find) Debian is probably the largest OS in the history of computers. There's currently something like 8000 separate pieces of software available, with more every day. If you do find something that's not packaged for Debian yet, or you want a newer/different version, then you can do that too. Debian keeps /usr/local clean for you to install locally compiled packages. Another hint: have a look at GNU Stow (debian package: stow). It'll make installing and upgrading local software even easier. > --more control over boot process and graphical logins (I hate it) If you don't like graphical logins, then don't install (x|k|g)dm. Surely Suse doesn't actually mandate a graphical login manager? > --and the ability to *easily* control many of my tweaks. When SuSE > went exclusively to yast2, I lost the ability to change many things > (like the graphical login...) and changes I *did* make get changed back > after the next re-boot. Debian packages take your configuration very seriously. If a package alters your config without permission then that's a serious bug which you should report (http://bugs.debian.org/). > --documentation for me to read to help me figure stuff out. Every package installs documentation into /usr/share/doc/packagename/. There's also 'info' and 'man' pages. For more general documentation, have a look at the Debian Quick Reference (http://qref.sf.net/) and NewbieDoc (http://newbiedoc.sf.net/). -rob
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