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

[Matt Doughty <mdoughty@example.com>]

On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 09:42:42AM +0900, Shimpei Yamashita wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 05, 2002 at 08:09:59PM +0900,
> Jonathan Byrne wrote:
> > Matt Doughty (mdoughty@example.com) wrote:
> > > I can't think of any reason to use RH over debian. The install
> > 
> > I could think of a few minor issues, such as Debian using 
> > inetd by default and having a fairly wide-open default install,
> 
> Oh, I can think of a biggie. 
> 
> With Debian, stable releases are *old*. Potato is ancient, woody isn't even
> released and it's already old, and sid--well, there's a reason it's called
> "unstable". In contrast, Red Hat's stable versions do tend to have reasonably
> new versions of all the packages. Obviously, this can cut both ways, as RH has
> a tendency to give you *un*reasonably new versions of gcc, glibc, kernel,
> etc....

Heh didn't think much about that because I pretty much use linux for 
the desktop, and not nearly as much for servers.  Still as you noted
the most recent version of RH isn't necessarily better or safer than
sid if you really need the new packages. Otherwise, It makes more sense
to run wooddy for a server that needs to be stable.

> 
> Having said that, I do run Debian unstable at home and haven't thought of
> switching out. On the other hand, my home machine doesn't do anything
> mission critical, so I usually don't mind if something breaks for a few
> days.
> 

I actually run a mixture of NetBSD, and Gentoo for the most part these
days. If I were going to install a mission critical server I think I
would have to go with NetBSD.

--Matt