[plug] Potato stable

[The Thought Assassin]

On Tue, 15 Aug 2000, Scott, Simon wrote:
> Can anyone tell me what all the fuss about Potato is?
> I use mandrake, and sometimes RH... Is Debian really that much better?

Well for me, yes, but surprise, surprise, it really depends what you're
after in a distribution. Debian has perhaps the best reputation for
reliability, standards-compliance, ease of upgrading and installing new
software, and a transparent development process. It is often criticised
for lack of usability for non-Unix types, the difficult install process it
used to have, lack of built-in support for proprietary software, and it's
tendency to release "stable" versions long after other distros. (in
reality, Debian's "unstable" version is usually more reliable than
so-called "stable" versions of other distributions, so it's more a matter
of higher standards than slower development.)

The average Linux desktop user who is just starting to migrate from
Windows will probably not get much out of Debian. The average Linux server
administrator would be insane not to use Debian.

-Greg Mildenhall