alt.os.linux - Slackware vs Debian: Comments?

Author

Slackware vs Debian: Comments?

William D. Tallman

2002-10-12, 7:24 pm

I'm curious to learn the opinions of those who contribute here:

What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of these two distros?

Both are touted as rock solid, and both appear to attract so-called "power
users". Both are mature distros: Slackware first offered in April 1993 and
Debian in August of that year. And there are differences: for instance,
Slackware uses the more common (?) BSD init, and Debian the SVR4 init.

I'd rather not have started a flame war here, having hoped for an informed
discussion. But then this is the Usenet.... <grin>

Bill Tallman
--
Registered Linux User: #221586
Too many operating systems don't spoil the hard-drive,
but they sure confuse the user!!!

Paul Lutus

2002-10-12, 8:24 pm

William D. Tallman wrote:

> I'm curious to learn the opinions of those who contribute here:
>
> What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of these two distros?

www.distrowatch.com

--
Paul Lutus
www.arachnoid.com

William D. Tallman

2002-10-12, 9:24 pm

Paul Lutus wrote:

> William D. Tallman wrote:
>
>> I'm curious to learn the opinions of those who contribute here:
>>
>> What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of these two distros?
>
> www.distrowatch.com
>
Thanks for the URL. I was inquiring of the contributors in this NG,
however...

Bill Tallman
--
Registered Linux User: #221586
Personal opinions are unavailable from committees....

Bit Twister

2002-10-12, 9:24 pm

On Sat, 12 Oct 2002 18:34:52 -0700, William D. Tallman wrote:
> Paul Lutus wrote:
>
>> William D. Tallman wrote:
>>
>>> I'm curious to learn the opinions of those who contribute here:
>>>
>>> What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of these two distros?
>>
>> www.distrowatch.com
>>
> Thanks for the URL. I was inquiring of the contributors in this NG,
> however...

How about this url
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...kware+vs+Debian
Results 1 - 10 of about 19,000. Search took 0.17 seconds

Paul Lutus

2002-10-12, 10:24 pm

William D. Tallman wrote:

> Paul Lutus wrote:
>
>> William D. Tallman wrote:
>>
>>> I'm curious to learn the opinions of those who contribute here:
>>>
>>> What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of these two distros?
>>
>> www.distrowatch.com
>>
> Thanks for the URL. I was inquiring of the contributors in this NG,
> however...

Thanks for the post. You need to read the published information first,
however ...

--
Paul Lutus
www.arachnoid.com

bach37

2002-10-13, 1:24 am

I think it depends on what you are going to use the distro for. Slackware
seems to be the standard home linux box server distro. Pretty easy to
install, and runs from an old Pentium, with a 500MB hard drive. Slackware
installation is on one cd. I'm installing Debian now on a machine. I'll let
you know how it goes. (The install for Debian wasn't near as smoochie as
Mandrake or RedHat's install, but so far not too complex either.)

-Scott

John Hasler

2002-10-13, 9:24 am

William D. Tallman wrote:
> Thanks for the post. You need to read the published information first,
> however ...

Ok. Here's an opinion: Debian is better. Now someone else can opine that
Slackware is better and you'll have everything you are going to get.
--
John Hasler
john@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, Wisconsin

Joe Fredrickson

2002-10-13, 10:24 am

Let us consider Debian and Slackware.
Both are power distro's (as such) and both can be setup to specifically
perform a certain task usually on minimal hardware and with out too much
time..
Both are relatively stable, and are kept up to date rather well i think.
Both are this, both are that etc.. etc..

Now let us consider package management.
[Deb]: apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
-- Now you walk away and it does it all for you

[Slack]: wget <some address> && tar xjf file.tar.bz2 && ./configure etc..
-- Somewhat more complicated. (and inaccurate in many ways)

Do you see the point im trying to make yet??

--
remember this is the sequence of events, in no particular order

Registered Linux User 282072
<www.volutin.net -- everything irrelevant>

Paul Lutus

2002-10-13, 11:24 am

John Hasler wrote:

> William D. Tallman wrote:
>> Thanks for the post. You need to read the published information first,
>> however ...
>
> Ok. Here's an opinion: Debian is better. Now someone else can opine that
> Slackware is better and you'll have everything you are going to get.

Precisely why such threads are troll fodder. Present company excepted, of
course.

--
Paul Lutus
www.arachnoid.com

+Chiron+

2002-10-13, 12:24 pm

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Sun, 13 Oct 2002 15:10:56 GMT, Joe Fredrickson tempted the fates in
alt.os.linux by proclaiming the following:
> Let us consider Debian and Slackware.

[snip]

> Now let us consider package management.
> [Deb]: apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
> -- Now you walk away and it does it all for you

Which is fine for those that aren't interested in maintaining any sense of
control over their systems.

Keep in mind, you're placing your trust of your system's integrity w/ the
packager of XYZ package, and not in your own skills/understanding.

> [Slack]: wget <some address> && tar xjf file.tar.bz2 && ./configure etc..
> -- Somewhat more complicated. (and inaccurate in many ways)

Yo kid, Tarballs *are* package management.(tm)

Those precdeures are UNIX standards. Period. End-of-story.

> Do you see the point im trying to make yet??

That you don't understand UNIX?

Yup. It's clear.

- --
+Chiron+ | COBOL is for morons. -- E.W. Dijkstra
GnuPG Pub Key 848D1A2D -o) |
Linux Kernel 2.4.19 /\\ |
Slackware 8.1 *w00t* _\_v |
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William D. Tallman

2002-10-13, 4:24 pm

bach37 wrote:

> I think it depends on what you are going to use the distro for.
> Slackware
> seems to be the standard home linux box server distro. Pretty easy to
> install, and runs from an old Pentium, with a 500MB hard drive. Slackware
> installation is on one cd. I'm installing Debian now on a machine. I'll
> let you know how it goes. (The install for Debian wasn't near as smoochie
> as Mandrake or RedHat's install, but so far not too complex either.)
>
> -Scott

I installed each of them from a single iso image I downloaded from the
respective sites. I didn't think either Debian or Slackware was especially
difficult to install. Neither of them are automatic, though both have
default choices. Seemed to me that the difficulty ascribed to each of them
is somewhat overstated, but I've learned that I'm not a fair judge of such
things; hence, in part, my query.

Do let me know what you think about the Debian installation!

Thanks for the response.

Bill Tallman
--
Registered Linux User: #221586

William D. Tallman

2002-10-13, 4:24 pm

+Chiron+ wrote:

> On Sun, 13 Oct 2002 15:10:56 GMT, Joe Fredrickson tempted the fates in
> alt.os.linux by proclaiming the following:
>> Let us consider Debian and Slackware.
>
> [snip]
>
>> Now let us consider package management.
>> [Deb]: apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
>> -- Now you walk away and it does it all for you
>
> Which is fine for those that aren't interested in maintaining any sense of
> control over their systems.

Perhaps it's more a matter of skill level. One might be so interested, but
not (yet) equal to the task.

> Keep in mind, you're placing your trust of your system's integrity w/ the
> packager of XYZ package, and not in your own skills/understanding.

Umm... it's my understanding that one is trusting the folks at Debian, or
am I wrong here? I can well imagine that there are sources of packages
that have been apt-wrapped, but have not been subject to Debian's
inspection. Perhaps the question is one of source: are all the packages
available from Debian guaranteed by them?

>> [Slack]: wget <some address> && tar xjf file.tar.bz2 && ./configure etc..
>> -- Somewhat more complicated. (and inaccurate in many ways)
>
> Yo kid, Tarballs *are* package management.(tm)

Exactly so! './configure' does everything except downloading what is
missing, if in fact anything is. The problem is that it's messages are
somewhat terse at times, and that can lead to confusion unless one puts
forth the effort to really understand what's happening. Fortunately, the
configure file is easily readable, so a short search yields much
information.

> Those precdeures are UNIX standards. Period. End-of-story.

Oh no! The story doesn't end until the UNIX-guru is dumped on his XXX.
Dontcha ever read Dilbert?! Ah well, that was a while back, wasn't it...
LOL!!!

>> Do you see the point im trying to make yet??
>
> That you don't understand UNIX?
>
> Yup. It's clear.

Hmmm... are you equating UNIX with *nix? In fact, is that a general
assumption (that they are essentially identical if not exactly equivalent)?
I guess the point here is that Linux is *nix, as is UNIX. To what extent
is the newbie to get that Linux requires an understanding of UNIX?

Smileys are such nice things to see in NGs!!!

Thanks for the contribution, +Chiron+!

Bill Tallman
--
Registered Linux User: #221586

AthlonRob

2002-10-13, 6:24 pm

On Sun, 13 Oct 2002 15:10:56 GMT, Joe Fredrickson <joe@volutin.net> wrote:
> Let us consider Debian and Slackware.
> Both are power distro's (as such) and both can be setup to specifically
> perform a certain task usually on minimal hardware and with out too much
> time..
> Both are relatively stable, and are kept up to date rather well i think.
> Both are this, both are that etc.. etc..

Yup, I agree with ya up to here....

> Now let us consider package management.
> [Deb]: apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
> -- Now you walk away and it does it all for you
>
> [Slack]: wget <some address> && tar xjf file.tar.bz2 && ./configure etc..
> -- Somewhat more complicated. (and inaccurate in many ways)
>
> Do you see the point im trying to make yet??

Well, I see the point you're trying to make.

Debian has a more robust package manager than Slackware does.

In Slackware, I do compile everything from source. But do you have to?
Nope, that's why linuxpackages.net is there. :-)

Slackware does have slackware packages, it doesn't do any of that
dependency tracking crap, though... that's what the sysadmin is for.

Here's my take on the differences between Debian and Slackware, from
experience:

Debian was slower and more complicated. If you wanted to change your
hardware, it took a little bit of work to figure out what to do. If you
needed to change XYZ or ZYX, you had to use a special config tool. I
think I used Stable, too, so everything seemed outdated (I was trying to
use it as an LFS bootstrap).

Slackware is faster. No, I don't know why... but Slackware seems to be
the fastest non-source distro out there (that is, not Gentoo). The
config files seem to make more sense to me (I like the BSD-like init
setup) and changing a setting somewhere is a google away from the config
file, which is generally text-editable. The module setup made sense,
too... just edit /etc/rc.d/rc.modules to reflect your hardware.

I've used Slackware for several months and only used Debian for a few
weeks. I really wasn't impressed with Debian, and didn't work on trying
to get it working for me or figuring thigns out. I just went back to
Slackware.

I doubt anybody here has an impartial view on the matter. I definitely
like Slackware better, and many people live and breathe debian. I'm no
longer on one LUG mailing list because there were so many Debian zealots
who would respond to every question with a Debian response... even if
the OP said he was on RedHat, Slackware, SuSE, Mandrake, or whatever...

Rob

John Hasler

2002-10-13, 8:24 pm

Rob writes:
> If you needed to change XYZ or ZYX, you had to use a special config tool.

I know of no Debian packages that require the use of special config tools.

> ...changing a setting somewhere is a google away from the config file,
> which is generally text-editable.

Debian policy requires that all config files be text-editable and that
upgrades not over-write hand edits.
--
John Hasler
john@dhh.gt.org (John Hasler)
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI

Faux_Pseudo

2002-10-13, 9:24 pm

_.--- William D. Tallman spoke in alt.os.linux --------._
> I'm curious to learn the opinions of those who contribute here:
>
> What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of these two distros?
>
> Both are touted as rock solid, and both appear to attract so-called "power
> users". Both are mature distros: Slackware first offered in April 1993 and
> Debian in August of that year. And there are differences: for instance,
> Slackware uses the more common (?) BSD init, and Debian the SVR4 init.
>
> I'd rather not have started a flame war here, having hoped for an informed
> discussion. But then this is the Usenet.... <grin>

They both have very different development modles. Slackware has Pat
who art in total contro, kind like the philosopher king that Plato
spent so much time talking about. Debian has a burocracy that allows
nothing through until it is tested and tested some more.

Debian tries to automate system upkeep as much as possible with things
like apt-get. Slackware takes the "Praise the text editor beer and
pass the compiler" approach.

'---...____ Faux_Pseudo ________________...---~~~

--
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YIM=faux_pseudo : Rev: fear_factory/obsolete/Fear_Factory_-_Descent.mp3
I take you where : Now: r_Factory_-_Demanufacture_-_07_-_Body_hammer.mp3
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John Hasler

2002-10-13, 9:24 pm

William D. Tallman writes:
> Perhaps the question is one of source: are all the packages available
> from Debian guaranteed by them?

In the sense that they have been packaged by Debian maintainers in
compliance with Debian policy, yes. Each new package (including new
versions of old ones) goes first into 'unstable', where it must remain free
of release critical bugs for two weeks (slight oversimplification) before
it can move into 'testing'. Most Debian maintainers run 'unstable' and
they are not shy about filing bugs.
--
John Hasler
john@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, Wisconsin

Atokata

2002-10-14, 2:24 am

On Sat, 12 Oct 2002 16:33:33 -0700, "William D. Tallman"
<wtallman@olypen.com> wrote:

»I'm curious to learn the opinions of those who contribute here:
»
»What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of these two distros?
»
»Both are touted as rock solid, and both appear to attract so-called
"power
»users". Both are mature distros: Slackware first offered in April
1993 and
»Debian in August of that year. And there are differences: for
instance,
»Slackware uses the more common (?) BSD init, and Debian the SVR4
init.
»
»I'd rather not have started a flame war here, having hoped for an
informed
»discussion. But then this is the Usenet.... <grin>
»
»Bill Tallman

Slack and Debian are my two favorite distros, but for different
reasons. Slack is a fascinating experience with every use, because
there's always something to learn. I would call it the Volkswagen of
the Linux world, because you can do *anything* with it, given enough
time and effort.

Debian, while also being very open ended, is generally easier to
administer. You lose a degree of control over the system by using apt,
as opposed to compiling from source, but sometimes this isn't a big
deal. For example, a recent consulting client needed an NT4 PDC (or
equivalent, heh), so I used a basic Debian net install to grab just
the bare minimum that was needed to run samba. The whole setup process
took me about 30 minutes, from power-on to authenticating Win2k boxen.

Now, I could have done the same thing with Slackware, to be sure, but
for a system which will have a life of doing nothing more than
shuffling various files around a 4-client LAN, I couldn't see the
justification of the extra work of hand-compiling and configuring a
system.

(For the record, all of *my* servers are running Slack 8.1. I'm kinda
type-A about these things, though.)

William D. Tallman

2002-10-15, 12:24 am

John Hasler wrote:

> William D. Tallman writes:
>> Perhaps the question is one of source: are all the packages available
>> from Debian guaranteed by them?
>
> In the sense that they have been packaged by Debian maintainers in
> compliance with Debian policy, yes. Each new package (including new
> versions of old ones) goes first into 'unstable', where it must remain
> free of release critical bugs for two weeks (slight oversimplification)
> before
> it can move into 'testing'. Most Debian maintainers run 'unstable' and
> they are not shy about filing bugs.

I would guess that the key lies in the Debian policy, then, which is itself
apparently well monitored in its observance. I would think that it must
be, if in fact stable Debian apps and Debian upgrades are never known to
fail. Or is that actually the case?

Unstable runs about two weeks, eh? Hmmmm....

Thanks!

Bill Tallman
--
Registered Linux User: #221586

William D. Tallman

2002-10-15, 1:24 am

AthlonRob wrote:

[snip]
> Debian has a more robust package manager than Slackware does.
>
> In Slackware, I do compile everything from source. But do you have to?
> Nope, that's why linuxpackages.net is there. :-)
>
> Slackware does have slackware packages, it doesn't do any of that
> dependency tracking crap, though... that's what the sysadmin is for.

Interesting. Linus is said to have observed that real men write their own
device drivers; is dependency tracking the modern equivalent? The
sysadmins I've known took full advantage of any sort of automation they
found useful.....

> Here's my take on the differences between Debian and Slackware, from
> experience:
>
> Debian was slower and more complicated. If you wanted to change your
> hardware, it took a little bit of work to figure out what to do. If you
> needed to change XYZ or ZYX, you had to use a special config tool. I
> think I used Stable, too, so everything seemed outdated (I was trying to
> use it as an LFS bootstrap).

Yep. Somewhat more complicated. Both of them have those 'THIS FILE IS
AUTOMAGICALLY GENERATED!!! DO NOT EDIT!!!' type warnings, though.

As far as out of date is concerned, unless I'm missing something, neither
Gnome2 or KDE3.{anything} are even in the unstable packages. Slack 8.1 has
KDE3.0 and I did dropline for Gnome2. So far, Gnome seems okay (except for
Galeon... argh!!). One wonders just what sort of problems Debian is
having with them. Their KDE is 2.2.25 for unstable!.

> Slackware is faster. No, I don't know why... but Slackware seems to be
> the fastest non-source distro out there (that is, not Gentoo). The
> config files seem to make more sense to me (I like the BSD-like init
> setup) and changing a setting somewhere is a google away from the config
> file, which is generally text-editable. The module setup made sense,
> too... just edit /etc/rc.d/rc.modules to reflect your hardware.

I agree! Slack does seem faster!

Dunno about the BSD/SVR4 init question. They both seem pretty
straightforward once one has used them. How about edit /etc/modules for
Debian? Talk about simplicity!!! It seems to me that Linux people
generally would prefer BSD because that's what they're accustomed to using.
What other distro than Debian uses the SVR4 init? Suse? Never ran Suse.

Getting config files from google? Heh.... I gotta try that...<grin>
well, I did get my iptables config file that way, come to think of it.

> I've used Slackware for several months and only used Debian for a few
> weeks. I really wasn't impressed with Debian, and didn't work on trying
> to get it working for me or figuring thigns out. I just went back to
> Slackware.

I can see your point. In fact, I find myself using Slack more often that
Debian. Read a sig somewhere that said "Sweet, sweet Slack!!!" I think I
understand... lol!!!

> I doubt anybody here has an impartial view on the matter. I definitely
> like Slackware better, and many people live and breathe debian. I'm no
> longer on one LUG mailing list because there were so many Debian zealots
> who would respond to every question with a Debian response... even if
> the OP said he was on RedHat, Slackware, SuSE, Mandrake, or whatever...

Oh yeah, the zealots. If Debian is so great, why do they have to spend all
that energy trying to sell it? No, don't answer that.... LOL!!!! But
I've seen the same sort of thing with Slack people. On the other hand,
the discussion here seems to be fairly reasoned, even when preferences are
expressed.

Thanks!

Bill Tallman
--
Registered Linux User: #221586

William D. Tallman

2002-10-15, 1:24 am

Faux_Pseudo wrote:

> _.--- William D. Tallman spoke in alt.os.linux --------._
>> I'm curious to learn the opinions of those who contribute here:
>>
>> What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of these two distros?
>>
>> Both are touted as rock solid, and both appear to attract so-called
>> "power
>> users". Both are mature distros: Slackware first offered in April 1993
>> and
>> Debian in August of that year. And there are differences: for instance,
>> Slackware uses the more common (?) BSD init, and Debian the SVR4 init.
>>
>> I'd rather not have started a flame war here, having hoped for an
>> informed
>> discussion. But then this is the Usenet.... <grin>
>
> They both have very different development modles. Slackware has Pat
> who art in total contro, kind like the philosopher king that Plato
> spent so much time talking about. Debian has a burocracy that allows
> nothing through until it is tested and tested some more.

Excellent point!!! If nothing else of exceptional value comes from this
thread, your observation fills the bill, I think. It isn't hard to
extrapolate thereon.

AthlonRob observed that Slack seems faster, and I agree. Pat is, or has
become, a distro artist, it would seem. No art is created by committee, so
Debian cannot be considered art. But Slackware just might be, I dunno.
Let's see, what constitutes art.... well, maybe a primary attribute is a
certain integrity of being (getting pretty indefinable here....), such
that makes the creation intrinsically efficient (inner harmony,
yadayada..). I'm not saying necessarily lean, mean, etc. but that it all
works together as a whole. Maybe that's part of why Slackware does seem
faster.

I realize that a real evaluation of that seemingness is better supported by
sound analysis, but I'm not going there... personally, that is. But
perhaps the concept of a single vision is important in understanding what
Slackware is all about. I dunno...

> Debian tries to automate system upkeep as much as possible with things
> like apt-get. Slackware takes the "Praise the text editor beer and
> pass the compiler" approach.

Yeah, and the automagic tends to create bloat and blandness and so forth.
On the other hand, I was astounded by the long upgrade/additional stuff
that I did using dselect, and it all worked perfectly!!! Wonder how often
that happens with Mandrake or Redhat. I dunno, never had the nerve to
try!!!

As far as the digital potables/edibles is concerned, that makes Slackware
less dependent on distro-specific goodies than Debian. And Debian is
supposed to be the definitive GNU distro... hmmmm... I got the idea that
such status suggested an aversion to distro-specific goodies, but I guess
not. That's interesting!

So maybe the (a?) real difference between Slackware and Debian lies in
their separate visions. What is intended in each case? Is Slackware a
sleek upscale sports sedan, and Debian some modern version of a Checker
Marathon? Now how many of you get that reference? LOL!!!

Anyway, good stuff so far!!

Bill Tallman
--
Registered Linux User: #221586

William D. Tallman

2002-10-15, 2:24 am

Atokata wrote:

[snip]
> Slack and Debian are my two favorite distros, but for different
> reasons. Slack is a fascinating experience with every use, because
> there's always something to learn. I would call it the Volkswagen of
> the Linux world, because you can do *anything* with it, given enough
> time and effort.

Well, I think I understand what you mean, though I personally wouldn't
think Volkswagen. YMOV... The point being, I take it, that having to
manually configure stuff gets one in intimate touch with what's going on.
And, yeah verily, that is indeed a larnin' experience!!

Which is in a number of ways a significant part of the value of Linux.
People are going to have to use computers; they'd best know more about the
stupid things than Gates and Company would like to allow, lest their
computers wind up using them!!!!

> Debian, while also being very open ended, is generally easier to
> administer. You lose a degree of control over the system by using apt,
> as opposed to compiling from source, but sometimes this isn't a big
> deal. For example, a recent consulting client needed an NT4 PDC (or
> equivalent, heh), so I used a basic Debian net install to grab just
> the bare minimum that was needed to run samba. The whole setup process
> took me about 30 minutes, from power-on to authenticating Win2k boxen.

I've heard this one before. A guy acquired broadband 24/7, set up a home
web server, and spent frustrating days on end trying to get a well known
distro that was supposed to specialize in such things to function reliably.
Finally, he installed Debian, had it up and running in a matter of hours,
and it just.... worked! No fuss, no hassle. That's impressive!!

Perhaps it's Debian that's the Volkswagen, then?

> Now, I could have done the same thing with Slackware, to be sure, but
> for a system which will have a life of doing nothing more than
> shuffling various files around a 4-client LAN, I couldn't see the
> justification of the extra work of hand-compiling and configuring a
> system.

Exactly so. If one just wants it to work for a well defined purpose,
Debian shines. If one wants to tinker with a finely crafted product,
perhaps Slackware....

> (For the record, all of *my* servers are running Slack 8.1. I'm kinda
> type-A about these things, though.)

He drives a company truck during the day, but in the evening , it's his own
well tuned custom machine that he takes for a spin...

Good stuff. Thanks!

Bill Tallman
--
Registered Linux User: #221586

John Hasler

2002-10-15, 9:24 am

William D. Tallman writes:
> I would guess that the key lies in the Debian policy, then, which is
> itself apparently well monitored in its observance.

The key lies in the Debian maintainers, who are diligent and skilled.
Debian policy expresses the consensus opinion of those maintainers as to
how packaging should be done.

> I would think that it must be, if in fact stable Debian apps and Debian
> upgrades are never known to fail. Or is that actually the case?

Of course not. Why do you think we have a bug tracking system?

> Unstable runs about two weeks, eh? Hmmmm....

After two rc-bug-free weeks in unstable packages are linked into testing,
which is essentially a "release candidate". When the release manager
decides to make a release he will remove those that have acquired rc bugs
(unless they are key packages, in which case he will postpone the release).
--
John Hasler
john@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, Wisconsin

John Hasler

2002-10-15, 9:24 am

William D. Tallman writes:
> Both of them have those 'THIS FILE IS AUTOMAGICALLY GENERATED!!! DO NOT
> EDIT!!!' type warnings, though.

Please file bugs against any Debian packages containing configuration files
with such warnings.

> What other distro than Debian uses the SVR4 init?

All distributions but Slackware use sysvinit, as far as I know. In Debian
you can install file-rc and have a single file if that's what you want.

The sysv system is more compatible with automated package management.

> If Debian is so great, why do they have to spend all that energy trying
> to sell it?

Who are "they"?
--
John Hasler
john@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, Wisconsin

William D. Tallman

2002-10-15, 6:24 pm

John Hasler wrote:

> William D. Tallman writes:
>> I would guess that the key lies in the Debian policy, then, which is
>> itself apparently well monitored in its observance.
>
> The key lies in the Debian maintainers, who are diligent and skilled.
> Debian policy expresses the consensus opinion of those maintainers as to
> how packaging should be done.

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks.

>> I would think that it must be, if in fact stable Debian apps and Debian
>> upgrades are never known to fail. Or is that actually the case?
>
> Of course not. Why do you think we have a bug tracking system?

Yep, nothing is ever perfect. But I understand the tract record for stable
is nothing short of phenomenal....

>> Unstable runs about two weeks, eh? Hmmmm....
>
> After two rc-bug-free weeks in unstable packages are linked into testing,
> which is essentially a "release candidate". When the release manager
> decides to make a release he will remove those that have acquired rc bugs
> (unless they are key packages, in which case he will postpone the
> release).

Two bug-free weeks sounds reasonable.

Thanks for the information!

Bill Tallman
--
Registered Linux User: #221586

William D. Tallman

2002-10-15, 7:24 pm

John Hasler wrote:

> William D. Tallman writes:
>> Both of them have those 'THIS FILE IS AUTOMAGICALLY GENERATED!!! DO NOT
>> EDIT!!!' type warnings, though.
>
> Please file bugs against any Debian packages containing configuration
> files with such warnings.

Well, my Debian install is in partition /dev/hda13.....

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
root@ansible:/mnt/lin_hda13/etc# cat modules.conf
### This file is automatically generated by update-modules"
#
# Please do not edit this file directly. If you want to change or add
# anything please take a look at the files in /etc/modutils and read
# the manpage for update-modules.
#
### update-modules: start processing /etc/modutils/0keep
# DO NOT MODIFY THIS FILE!
# This file is not marked as conffile to make sure if you upgrade modutils
# it will be restored in case some modifications have been made.
#
# The keep command is necessary to prevent insmod and friends from ignoring
# the builtin defaults of a path-statement is encountered. Until all other
# packages use the new `add path'-statement this keep-statement is essential
# to keep your system working
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I would think that /etc/modules.conf might be considered a distro
configuration file, rather than an application configuration file, but I
dunno......

In any case, I'm certainly not qualified to determine what might or might
not be a Debian bug!

>> What other distro than Debian uses the SVR4 init?
>
> All distributions but Slackware use sysvinit, as far as I know. In Debian
> you can install file-rc and have a single file if that's what you want.

I thought that Mandrake/RedHat ran BSD style init, but perhaps I'm mistaken.
Don't know about other distros.

> The sysv system is more compatible with automated package management.

Interesting. I'll keep that in mind. Thanks.

>> If Debian is so great, why do they have to spend all that energy trying
>> to sell it?
>
> Who are "they"?

"They" are, as always, those who fanatically proselytize others on behalf of
some human activity or endeavor that is communal in nature. Most commonly,
"they" are representatives, if not agents, of some religion (usually of the
Hebrew religious tree). In general, however, "they" can be found anywhere
that extremism or absolutism is practiced.

Debian, whatever else it might be, presents itself to some extent in those
terms: It is the most definitive Gnu-Linux distribution; it is the most
reliable; etc, etc, etc. It might be said, however, that such claims do
not promote fanaticism unless there is some amount of validity therein.

To some extent the same thing is true of all of the major Linux distros, so
Debian is not exceptional in that regard; "they" also hang out at
Slackware, and at Mandrake, and at RedHat, and at Suse.........

Bill Tallman
--
Registered Linux User: #221586

William D. Tallman

2002-10-16, 3:24 pm

William D. Tallman wrote:

> I thought that Mandrake/RedHat ran BSD style init, but perhaps I'm
> mistaken. Don't know about other distros.

Apparently I am badly mistaken!! That's what happens when something seems
a bit too obvious to investigate more closely. But that's a common way of
discovering what one needs to learn.

Thanks for that opportunity!

Bill Tallman
--
Registered Linux User: #221586

Chris Bennetts

2002-10-16, 4:24 pm

AthlonRob wrote:

> Debian was slower and more complicated. If you wanted to change your
> hardware, it took a little bit of work to figure out what to do. If you
> needed to change XYZ or ZYX, you had to use a special config tool. I
> think I used Stable, too, so everything seemed outdated (I was trying to
> use it as an LFS bootstrap).

I used Zipslack 8.0 as a LFS bootstrap... ;-)

--Chris

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