Re: [tlug] Re: Long-term Stability Distros

[Jim Breen <jimbreen@example.com>]

2009/3/15 Josh Glover <jmglov@example.com>:
> 2009/3/14 Jim Breen <jimbreen@example.com>:
>> Josh Glover <jmglov@example.com> wrote:
>>> As long as there are dependencies, there will be Dependency Hell. The
>>> real question is, does your distro give you tools for dealing with it?
>>> I find Debian / Ubuntu just as frustrating as Red Hat (and other
>>> RPM-based distros).
>>
>> What particular Debian frustrations have you?
>
> It really is a case of "the devil you know is better than the devil
> you don't", which I think is why people here are telling you that
> you'd probably be less frustrated with a Red Hat-based distro.

That's been the reason I have stuck with RedHat/Fedora for the last 11
years. However with me having to get ankle-deep with Debian when I
was fiddling with my EeePC, and doing the odd thing with the edrdg.org
server, going over to Debian would get me back to single-distro mode,
whereas keeping my main workstation on Fedora/Centos/etc. would mean
having to deal with two. I suspect it might be worth the change for
the initial pain. The success of getting a Japanese environment,
including all the old kterm/kinput2/canna stuff, working on the EeePC
has made me feel more positive.

> For me, yum works pretty well, and I know how to use the rpm commands
> when I need to. Aptitude also works well, but I do not know the dpkg
> commands all that well. So when I encounter Dependency Hell in Debian
> / Ubuntu, I am less likely to be able to climb out of the hole and
> more likely to keep digging, Beavis.

I found yum very good when my FC4 system was new enough to use the
repositories. Once I was cast adrift, it because useless. To be frank
I find apt-get just as good.

> Another problem for me is the location of config files. I know where
> things are in a Red Hat or Gentoo system, but Debian has some cheeky
> ways of "handling" config "for you". Just try to figure out where to
> specify options to wpa_supplicant for the first time for an hour of
> frustration.

Yes, that's the painful part. OTOH I have found a lot of online help,
tutorials, etc. for Debian. Speaking of wpa_supplicant, I set it up
on the EeePC a couple of weeks ago so I could use the Monash wireless
network which require id/password authentication. It wasn't a big task.

> I'm not really trying to say that Red Hat is better than Debian here,
> I'm trying to point out that any distro will give you problems, sooner
> or later, so the question then becomes how good that distro's tools
> are for unsticking itself.
>
> I find Gentoo's package tools *an order of magnitude* better that
> those of Red Hat or Debian. So it really matters to me not a whit
> whether Aptitude / dpkg is a little better than yum / RPM.

The thing that puts me off Gentoo is the compile-everything approach.
I'm quite happy to have others do the heavy lifting.

>> I must admit that after the discussion here, I am leaning towards a
>> distro upgrade/change. I may buy a new disk drive (bigger) and do a
>> fresh install there, so that I have a fall-back.
>
> After all of this discussion, I'd suggest that you'd still be better
> off with Centos or RHEL. Fedora is flaky by its very nature, so I can
> see why it is frustrating you. With Centos, you know that you have
> five or more years before it is EOL'd.

Another factor is that some changes in my activities planned for the
next few years will bring me into closer working with some fairly strong
Debian users. Academia is certainly a Debian stronghold, and I have been
increasingly isolated on the RH tree.

Cheers

Jim

-- 
Jim Breen
Adjunct Senior Research Fellow
Clayton School of Information Technology,
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/