Michael Kaminsky wrote:
>
> 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.
unstable is quite up to date, testing is only few weeks behind.
sometime there are problems with particular package - e.g. the gnucash,
afaik the maintainer is going to upload package in fairly short time (in
cases where maintainer cannot update package for long time and other
people use package some other developer uploads package (NMU -
non-maintainer upload), or takes over maintenance of package (if the
package is orphaned)). If you check the mailing list you will see that
there is unofficial package for gnucash (actually for the dependency, I
think).
> * 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.
there are few glitches here and there but generally changing your
source from potato to testing or to unstable work quite fine. the
problem is when the structure of packages changes - e.g. X 3 to X 4 you
have to apt-get install some packages. in most cases line:
apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
works fine. You might want to use dselect if you like its way to
handle recommended packages (apt-get ignores them). as long as you use
the debian tools (apt-get, dselect, aptitude) you can
install/uninstall/upgrade without any worries (well, within reasonable
limits of 'any').
> * 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)?
to certain extend.
some packages are configured upon installation (you can reconfigure
them later using package tools). Some configuration is handled using
update-* commands (menus, runlevels, alternatives (e.g. which window
manager is THE window manager, which vi clone should be used for vi
etc.)
as far as I know there is no debian network config tool (there is one
for ppp).
I've seen people recommending webmin. there's also linuxconf (I don't
like it, it's messy)
you have to do some manual editing of config files, even if tools are
available (e.g. samba - it is configured upon installation, there is
also config tool but I still find it easier to just edit the config
file, same/similar for postfix, apache, squid). editing config files is
a lot more flexible (how do you comment what you did and why in gui
tools?) and usually faster (and easier: to do, to troubleshoot) then
using config tools.
erik
