'Michael Dillon wrote:' > > >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 00:50:32 -0400 >From: Jon Lewis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[Clipped generic complaint about dselect's user unfriendlyness.] Wow one of my USENET "heroes" forwards a mail from another of my USENET "heroes" about my favorite Linux distribution. I simply must respond :) It is true that deselect is a bit quirky. And the last "stable" release of Debian had at least one fatal bug (if you select to install cflow, all dies due to a bug in the cflow package). However dselect is under continual improvement and is better each time I've tried it (you might consider downloading the latest version (ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/unstable/binary/base/dpkg*) and installing it with "dpkg -i" before running dselect). The on-line documentation explains enough about the system to get by. But my approach is to install whatever dselect chooses (adding a few add-ons maybe -- I've found that trying to add everything can cause problems). Then switch to the low-level command line tool, dpkg. I feel Debian's chief advantages are in its integration between packages, the community development model and its upgradeability. For these reasons I use Debian on most of my ISP clients' servers (and I like it much better than the one client who is sticking with Red Hat). Certainly there is room for improvement in dselect. And the author of dselect reports that it will be easy to develop an alternative user interface to the low-level package management system. If only I had time! In sum, for servers, I really like Debian. -- Christopher J. Fearnley | Linux/Internet Consulting [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] | UNIX SIG Leader at PACS http://www.netaxs.com/~cjf | (Philadelphia Area Computer Society) ftp://ftp.netaxs.com/people/cjf | Design Science Revolutionary "Dare to be Naive" -- Bucky Fuller | Explorer in Universe
