Re: why debian
On Friday 12 November 2004 02:11, ken keanon wrote:
> Hi,
>
> There are so many distros out there its confusing. Any reason(s) why Debian
> should be the preferred choice?
>
> Any statistics from any source(s) to proof the popularity of Debian?
>
> I'm in the dark waiting to be enlightened.
Well, first, some very general things:
1. Debian is not a commercial organization, but a protected non-profit. This
means they cannot be bought out.
2. Debian is a democratic organization, this means they cannot change
directions suddenly, are not subject to the whims of an executive, and will
not incur massive upsets in the user base nor in its developers. It also
means it will not just dissappear overnight: too many people are involved.
3. Debian has a social contract with its users which makes certain
(considerable) guarantees.
4. Debian is run and maintained by its core user base (debian developers) and
as such has a tendency to make things as easy to manage as possible.
As a direct result of the above, we also see that:
a. Debian provides the most stable linux environment, both as a target for
development and for daily work, of any linux distributor.
b. Debian provides mechanisms for ease of administration and management like
nothing else I've ever seen. Almost everything is done uniformly and
sensibly. This goes far, far beyond "apt-get".
c. Debian has a Bug Tracking System which is 100% open to the public, a boon
to admins troubleshooting problems. No one else, not Red Hat, Sun, Novell,
Microsoft nor Suse, has anything remotely comparable.
d. Debian is enormous; sarge will be approximately 15 cd's or 2 dvd's. Almost
the entire free software repository is at the users fingertips.
e. Debian keeps up with security very, very, well; and does so with a minimum
of disruption. It is quite safe, in stable, to update security without
worrying that your configuration will be blown away.
d. security is made a easy as possible; Red Hat for example, has a vested
interest in selling you RHN to get security updates. They will therefore
never have a system as simple and elegant as "apt-get".
Let's look at some of the details and niceties the above policies and
attitudes have engendered:
1. debsums - check md5sums of files on filesystem with debian packages.
2. apt-get - easy package management (SECURITY made easy -as it *should* be)
3. apt-cache - search / browse available packages
4. equivs - bypass the packaging system while satisfying it
5. apt-listbugs - query the bug tracking system
6. apt-listchanges - notification of what your updates did
7. separating configuration files from the files in the package (making it
easy to update without disrupting operation, among other things) see concept
of "conffile" in a debian package
8. wonderful docs; for example, all package changes are listed
in /usr/share/doc/package/changelog.Debian.gz, and all upstream changes
in /usr/share/doc/package/changelog.gz. /usr/share/doc also contains useful
examples where appropriate. you thus have a complete history of the upstream
package and the changes the packager made to it, separated neatly.
9. installs only what you tell it to (c.f. Red Hat)
10. wonderful way of abstracting kernel and kernel module building (also
apples to other packages in general)
11. politely splitting up of packages when appropriate (e.g., snort-mysql vs
snort-pgsql and snort-common, same for many, many others)
12. apt-build - build packages on the fly from source
13. auto-apt - install packages automagically when a (missing) file is
accessed (great for ./configure; make ; make install freaks)
14. reportbug - easy way to report bugs to the BTS
There are dozens of others, I'm getting tired. Someday perhaps I'll compile a
reasonably complete list of niceties :). Anyone care to add?
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