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

[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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

-- 
Cheers,
Josh