I'm been using Mandrake for the past couple of years, and now I'm considering switching to Debian; but, I have some concerns. I consider myself a fairly experienced Linux user and use Linux for all my computing needs (devel, digital camera stuff, laptop stuff ,text processing, networking, etc.). I would like input on the following:
* One reason I moved to Mandrake from Redhat (from Slackware) is that the packages are extremely up-to-date. Even the unstable version of Debian seems sorely lacking. Mandrake seems to put out RPMs within 1-2 days of the upstream developers. There are still no Debian packages for software I use regularly that's been out for > 1 month (according to the debian web page package search form). Example: gnucash. Also, in some cases the package I want is up-to-date, but not all of its dependencies. Example: gnumeric. Version 0.72 requires a version of guppi for which there is no Debian package. * Apt + dselect seem very powerful, efficient if you use them together correctly. From the mailing lists, though, "correctly" seems to be a matter of confusion (or perhaps just preference). RPMs don't cut it for bleeding edge multiple-dependency upgrades (as you all know well). This reason is key to my wanting to change over. Have the people who wrote these systems outlined their correct usage in a FAQ/manpage/etc.? Also, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to upgrade to testing or unstable once you install. From the mailing lists, it seems like magic one-line commands such as "apt-get dist-upgrade" leave much manually fixing left to do. Apparently one can live mostly in testing but grab select packages from unstable by configuring "pins" in an apt_preferences file. Are there simple instructions for doing so? Again, people on the mailing lists seem confused and/or have varied opinions on how the mechanism is supposed to work. * Mandrake has very decent system configuration tools. I spent many years editing scripts and config files to setup up Linux machines, but it just takes longer when it comes to simple, basic tasks (adding a network interface, changing the runlevel configuration for daemons, etc.). Does Debian provide such tools (even if clearly they don't work for all situations)? I apologize for the length; any advice/comments would be appreciated. Thanks, Michael
