Fedora vs. RHE

[Warren Postma]

>  Redhat has started copying that trend, along with the trend to bloat
>that MS started.  I wouldn't mind $5.00/month for the convenience of
>up2date, but continuous upgrades-du-jour and short lifespan for each
>version is getting annoying.  I want to *USE* my computer, not spend all
>my time installing new versions.  I am this => <= close to switching to
>Debian already.  They have a reputation for versions being few and far
>between, but that sounds tempting about now.
>
>  
>

I switched my laptop to Debian a year ago, and I haven't looked back. 
For my purposes, software development, learning Linux/unix and kernel 
internals,
and generic KDE/Gnome/OpenOffice/Mozilla type stuff, I find Debian 
*nearly* ideal for several reasons:

(1) apt-get is not just a binary, it's a policy.  I've tried apt-rpm, 
and unfortunately, it's not nearly as nice, because the policy stuff 
isn't done properly.

(2) no reinstalls.  "apt-get dist-upgrade"is enough.

(3) manual configuration steps, when required, teach me more about how 
my system works, which is achieving one of my goals. fancy guis that 
hide how things work underneath are great for end-users but not for 
techies who want to learn it.


Nevertheless, here are my gripes, which even turned back into positives, 
once I became Enlightened:

(1) For Desktop usage, Debian doesn't come polished up out of the box.  
For starters, there is no box for Debian to come out of, and for 
seconds, the installer is functional, but hardly as polished, efficient, 
and thorough as the ones that come with RedHat, mandrake, etc.   
Ironically though, this polish turns into a disadvantage for me, since 
reinstalling is so easy, I tended never to put any real data, or do any 
real work on Linux, since my Linux partition got wiped clean by each new 
distro that I downloaded.  The reason that the installer isn't polished 
is because real people doing real work aren't using the installer very 
often, infact, almost never.  Only people who are trying the upgrade of 
the day care about the installer.    Basic debian installs are no harder 
in practice, but the learning curve until they become easier, is 
longer.   But with perserverance, and groups.google.com, you can do 
*anything* on Debian. :-)

(2)  Debian woody (stable) does tend to get a little bit stale, but the 
answer, in Debian-think is not "you can't do that", it's "how much do 
you want to learn?". Turn the notch up to 'testing' to work with the 
next release, or go to unstable (sid) if you want to go to ten, and if 
you want to go to Eleven, in true Spinal Tap style, then go grab CVS 
head from whatever you want to use, and roll up your sleeves, and build 
it yourself,  but put it into /usr/local instead, or in a chroot 
environment, whatever, so what's stopping you?  Don't know C, makefiles, 
configure scripts?   If your brain ain't full yet, just wait. :-)


Now I must say that I find the Fedora project to be a fabulous idea,  
because I think it's an attempt to backpedal RedHat into becoming 
"Debian with RPMs".  Having a better installer wouldn't hurt Debian, and 
having Fedora be "easy to install like RedHat, but with more community 
involvement like Debian" could only be good,and I'm counting the days 
until they implement Debian style policies, and a three-tiered- pipeline 
(stable, unstable, testing, anyone?).


Regards,
Warren


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