Re: Switching to Debian (from Fedora)
On Tuesday 23 August 2005 03:06 am, A. Lanza wrote:
>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 just switched to Debian less than a year ago after being a long time
Red Hat user (the first Red Hat i installed was 3.0.3). Welcome to the
club!
If you like apt-get, try aptitude. It has most of the same command line
switches, plus a curses GUI that almost makes package management fun. I
think it might also keep better track of package interdependencies.
>* 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.
My favorite difference is that on Debian it takes less work to run a
more obscure window manager than Gnome or KDE (i'm a fan of AfterStep).
>* 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?
When Xorg came out, Sarge was almost ready to become the stable release.
Sarge is what i'm running, but i've not had any problems with my older
hardware. If you want Xorg, try switching to the testing distribution.
To do that, edit /etc/apt/sources.list and every time you see "stable"
or "sarge" change it to "testing". Then run aptitude, hit "u" then "U"
and then "g" and "g" again.
>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 :)
I really like Debian as a desktop. I'm not using it for production
servers yet, but am working on a web server that goes live next week.
As a desktop i appreciate the ease of security and other software
upgrades. I also like that if i want to stay on top of software updates
i don't have to reinstall the system every 6 months as i did with Red
Hat (i tend towards laziness, so it usually ended up being every 2-3
years, which probably isn't good for security).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Ramaley
Digital Media Library Specialist
(515) 271-1934
Cowles Library 140, Drake University
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