Why I use Debian. Was Re: [plug] Mandrake - printing

[Greg Mildenhall]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2000, russ wrote:
> Greg Mildenhall wrote:
> > Yes, but I also meant the proprietary things that Caldera and SuSe tend to
> > integrate too far into their distros - 
> I don't really know what you mean by this but I use SuSE and I've used
> Turbolinux and Red Hat in the past. I don't think SuSE goes any
> further than any of these.
Perhaps it was just my impression, sorry.

> The main differences I've found have been in the installation.***
It's very easy to use one distro's install program to make installing
another distro simpler. It does take some knowhow, but it is one of the
most useful things about open source systems. Hell, I know numerous people
who use Linux bootdisks as an aid to installing windows; Sometimes for
hardware recognition, sometimes to get an initial bootable disk image
or set of drivers onto the machine without the need to use the drivers
themselves.

> And it defaults to KDE, not Gnome, which is definitely an advantage. I
> find core dumps annoying :)
I find knowing the software I have is illegally licensed annoying, and
that the author doesn't want me using it, but each to their own. :)

> > if something is good, and is Free,
> > (like-speech-not-beer) then every distro will have it or an equivalent.
> Why doesn't everybody use APT then? Sorry, couldn't resist... :)
I think it is because not everyone judges a distro by the same things a
system administrator would - see ***. Everyone is looking for different
things in a distribution.

> > But everyone needs APT. :)
> The real reason I jumped in here is to ask if APT can be used on a
> non-Debian distro? Can I just get the APT rpm ;-) and install it then
> use APT for now on?
AFAIK, the APT people are intending to extend it to RPMs and .tgzs and the
like, but it won't necessarily have the magic ability to sort out
dependencies for you because RPM doesn't _quite_ have all of the features
necessary to make it possible, but should do in later versions. I think
that Redhat also needs to implement the judicious _use_ of these features,
such as virtual packages, flexible versioning and the like as Debian has.

I think Corel/Storm/Progeny will serve as a wake-up call, and that the
major distributors will not take long to match their functionality. The
only problem is that it could be difficult to bring in stricter
package-management in a way that is compatible with past laxity.

-Greg