To quote "Steve R. Hastings" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
# I am interested in why people prefer Debian to other Linux
# distributions. Please explain the top few reasons why you chose
Debian
# rather than something else.
Let me just explain a bit of my philosophy :) Don't worry, I'm not
talking religion or anything here - pure Computer Science ;)
Anyways, I've always felt that there were two main areas in the "ease"
of a system - how easy it is to learn, and how easy it is to use.
Windows is very easy to learn. On the outside, it's very simple, not
many things to twiddle with(and break :), and rather consistent.
However, it's not very easy to use. There's a lack of fine-grained
control throughout the entire system. Program specialization is frowned
upon - everthing should be standard, therefore programs are generally
only specialized in what they do, not how you use them. This imposes a
number of limitations. There's also another problem - generally, the
simpler a computer interface is on the outside, the more complex it is
underneath(there are notable exceptions, like PalmOS, which I'm in love
with). Since Windows allows very little low-level access to the system,
you're stuck with a very bad user-interface when you're trying to do
system maintenance chores.
Most Unix-based systems are difficult to learn, partially because of
specialization. There are commands for everything. And different
commands for the same thing :) There are shell constructs, scripting
languages, everything is customizable up the wazoo. This makes it
generally more difficult to learn(or, at least more time-consuming).
However, once learned, the system is really easy to use. There's a
certain efficiency. When you want to copy a file, you 'cp <source>
<destination>'. You don't open up a file manager, navigate to the source
"folder", open up another window, navigate to the destination, then drag
the source file to the destination window. You just 'cp <source>
<destination'. Easy, very very easy.
Debian is like that. It's harder to learn than both Mandrake and Red
Hat, but it's easier to use and maintain. I wouldn't have been able to
go straight from Windows into Debian, I needed Caldera, Mandrake, and
Red Hat as transitional phases, but now that I'm here I'm not going
back. I should mention that Red Hat, Mandrake and friend's don't stop
you from using lower-level commands; but they rely a great deal on their
pretty GUIs to configure the system. I've broken my boxes more than once
configuring something manually, and then the GUI tool dies and takes
half my system with it. Why didn't I just configure it with the GUI?
Difficult to do when you've had a hard drive failure, and you've only
got a wee little bit of stuff available to you.
David Barclay Harris, Clan Barclay
Aut agere, aut mori. (Either action, or death.)
P.S.: Not to mention the fact that Debian is generally easier to
maintain, due to the 'apt' frontend to the package management system,
and the generally high-quality packages volounteers produce. Don't
underestimate that - if I ever get around to become a package maintainer
for something, it'll be something I use and rely on. I'll make sure it's
done right. That's the general attitude, I find, with Debian package
maintainers.
