Red Hat to Debian

[Fraser Campbell]

On November 3, 2003 12:07 am, Peter Hiscocks wrote:
> I do know that our system maintainers at Ryerson are leery of RH because
> they seem to be diverging from the standard way of doing things that all
> the other distros use. Is that the problem?

I have never liked Redhat.  My main problem with Redhat, lack of packaged 
software (SuSe and Debian are immense compared to Redhat) and lack of 
alternative versions of software.

apache2 is the only version of apache provided with Redhat 8.  Redhat 8 was 
released just a few months after apache2 was declared stable.  Quite a few 
apache modules are still not working well, or have not been ported to apache2 
at all.  Redhat didn't give you a choice of apache 1.3 or 2.0, if you want to 
run apache 1.3 for compatibility reasons you're on your own.

If for some reason you need perl 5.6.1 instead of 5.8.0 too bad, you're on 
your own.  If you need any perl module even slightly off the beaten track it 
won't be packaged for redhat, same goes for python extensions.

gcc same thing, why would you want anything besides 3.2?

RPM in redhat 8.0 had a nasty habit of locking up, you then need to remove 
some db files and rebuild the database.  RPM is poorly documented.

Redhat is no longer supporting a free version.  If you're a contractor or VAR 
you'll have a hard time trying to fit in Redhat unless you're willing to fork 
over large sums for the enterprise versions.

All I really want from a distribution is package management and not having to 
build or maintain everything from scratch.  Trying to shoehorn Redhat into a 
solution doesn't make sense to me considering the alternatives that are out 
there.

-- 
Fraser Campbell <fraser-Txk5XLRqZ6CsTnJN9+BGXg at public.gmane.org>                 http://www.wehave.net/
Georgetown, Ontario, Canada                               Debian GNU/Linux

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