Re: Debian vs. Red Hat (was Re: [tlug] Mandrake vs. Red Hat)

[Matt Gushee <mgushee@example.com>]

On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 09:42:42AM +0900, Shimpei Yamashita wrote:

> With Debian, stable releases are *old*. Potato is ancient, woody isn't even

You say that like it's a bad thing. I would argue that it's good:

Regardless of what distro they use, developers/power
users/miscellaneous-people-who-know-what-they're-doing can generally
figure out how to install whatever they need, with or without the help
of the package system.

Debian's conservative approach means that most of the software is 
thoroughly tested, so you're more likely to get an out-of-the-box system
where *everything works*--which is what people who lack the skills to
go beyond what the distro offers generally want. And if you're a little
more sophisticated and want something brand new, I find Debian makes it
easier to do so within the package system.

Whereas if you're a newbie and you get a brand-spanking-new Redhat
system, and something you need to use is broken, what do you do?
Downgrade an RPM package? Good luck with that.

Case in point, sort of: last time I used a RedHat box, that distro
(probably RH 7.1) came with an *alpha* version of ViM. Well, there are
plenty of programs where I'm willing, even eager, to try out alpha
versions, but Vim isn't one of them. I'm not a Vim developer, I'm a
developer who uses Vim, and it damn well better work. IMHO it is
irresponsible to put alpha software in a product that you are offering
for sale as a production release. QA should be done by people who
volunteer to do it or who are paid to do it, not by unsuspecting
customers.

Besides, RedHat by no means has the latest versions of everything. I
think they're *still* shipping Python 1.5.2, which to most Python 
developers is a bloated, maggot-ridden corpse.

Hope nobody was about to eat a meal ;-)

-- 
Matt Gushee
Englewood, Colorado, USA
mgushee@example.com
http://www.havenrock.com/