just curious about Debian vs Redhat

I've used both Debian (at home) and Redhat (at work). Both have reasonable tools for managing software (dpkg for Debian, rpm for Redhat).   I've also done upgrades for both Debian and Redhat. The upgrade I did for Debian took several nights and a few e-mails. The upgrade for Redhat took abo

/var/log/ppp.log stays empty

I upgraded Debian 1.3.1 --> Debian 2.1, and reconfigured ppp.  It works, but now /var/log/ppp.log does not at all reflect what is happening during the ppp exchange.   Where's the new log file for ppp?   Thanks, Charlie  

2 problems -- building the 2.0.36 kernel; login error

1. I upgraded Debian 1.3.1 --> 2.1, but my kernel is still 2.0.29. What should I do to upgrade the kernel to 2.0.36?   2. When I login as any user other than root, the system rejects me with the error msg:       "System bootup in progress -- please wait"   I incrementally killed all

Debian meltdown - Linux no longer boots after libncurses4.2-3 upgrade fails.

I'm upgrading Debian 1.3.1 -> Debian 2.1. The autoup.sh script went ok.   But when I ran dselect, the upgrade for libncurses4.2-3 failed (as described in an earlier posting).   Now, Linux does not even boot.   I think dselect must have installed some packages, but then halted at libncurses,

help installing lincurses4 v. 4.2-3

I'm upgrading Debian 1.3.1 (bo) to Debian 2.1 (slink). I followed autoup.sh instructions first to upgrade libc5 -> libc6. But now, dselect tells me libc6 >= 2.0.7u-6 is required, but that my system only has libc6 2.0.7t-1. What's wrong? How can I fix it? Charlie