I am a very happy convert from Red Hat via SuSE to Debian. I will give you two disadvantages that spawn others. The release dates are infrequent. Also, IMHO, the current religious war over the meaning of Free is not serving the user base. It is apparently serving some of the more devout developers. The most recent instance in which I felt a disadvantage was when I had to log into a MS server over a ppp connection. The MS server required an encrypted password before I could even start exchanging the standard PPP information. It turns out that Red Hat has something called ms-chat that would allow me to do this using Linux. I will really need this tool soon so I hope that debian can refocus more on the distribution and less on policy.
Now the good things. Probably the best thing about Debian is the set of installation and upgrade tools. Also dbian package installation is, IMO, much better than the rpm method. For installation, if you have a reasonable web connection, you simply down-load five floppy images and use them to start the process. After kernel installation, you attach to the web and finishc the process. A utility called apt-get makes all upgrades effortless. You simply issue the commands apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade and the utility will rebuild your entire system on the fly. Aterwards, you can upgrade the kernel. apt-get can also install individual new packages from debian ftp-sites. It is nice because it checks dependencies and brings down everything you need to install the package. My final comment is about the installation itself. I prefer debian's less automatic but more flexible installation. It makes many fewer assumptions for you. This, of course, is one users perspective. Arthur H. Edwards 712 Valencia Dr. NE Abq. NM 87108 (505) 256-0834 On Fri, 28 Jul 2000, John L. Fjellstad wrote: > Hi, > > I'm a current RedHat user (started with Linux on RedHat because > it was available at Fry's), and I'm currently evaluating > Debian for a possible switch. > > Can anyone come up with a list of advantages of using Debian > Linux over Redhat Linux? > I would also love to hear any the weaknesses Debian has compared > RedHat. > > Thanks, > -- > John______________________________________________________________________ > email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Quis custodiet ipsos custodes > icq: thales @ 17755648 > > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null > >
