Switching to Debian (from Fedora)
Hi list,
i've been running Fedora linux for about 3 years now but... i wanted to
explore Debian as well. Recently, i had to set up a mail system and i
installed Debian Sarge on an old Pentium 3 machine with 128 MB of RAM.
The new(?) Sarge installer is quite good and i had no problems to set my
system up from a net-install CD. apt-get is just *great*, i usually use
an apt-get port for Fedora as my package manager tool.
I have to tell that i've been really surprised at the global performance
of Debian running on the machine i described above. apt-get runs faster
than in Fedora. I've liked quite a lot the configuration utility that
runs after installing some packages as Postfix or Postgresql.
Though, i have some general questions and observations:
* I have found Debian not very different from Fedora in the basics. I
would like to know what are the very differences among both distros.
* kernel 2.4.27 was installed in my box. It's been a suprise since in
Fedora i'm running kernels 2.6.x. Why this 2.4 kernel? Does Debian
consider 2.6 kernels unstable? I'd like to upgrade my kernel; how can i
do it using apt-get?
* There was no need for X in my mail server box, but i tried to install
Debian Sarge on my desktop machine and found some problems. My graphics
hardware (ATI Radeon 9250) was not supported. After looking at the XF86
logs i decided to go to ATI site for some support and found a
proprietary driver (fglrx), that i compiled into a kernel module. Now i
can start X and get 1024x768 24-bit color. Seems that performance is
acceptable, but graphics system is not stable, it hangs my whole system
(no way to get a console) after some random time... I had some problems
also with a Wireless desktop (keyboard+mouse) from Logitech, i had to
change mouse configuration manually in XF86Config.
Now, i had no problems with this hw before while installing Fedora
(since FC1). I wonder why this? Could it be because of the 2.4 kernel?
Maybe Fedora has better hw support than Debian?
* I noticed too that Debian runs XF86 instead of Xorg, as Fedora does.
Why this? What are the differences between them? Is video hw support
better in Xorg? Are there any licensing issues with Xorg?
After running Debian in my mail server for some time, i think that it
can be a really good choice for a production server, but what about
desktop? For the moment, i think i'll keep Fedora... or maybe not, if
someone gives me good reasons :)
Thanks for your kind attention. I'll be waiting and will appreciate your
answers and opinions.
Alf
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