On Tue, Aug 14, 2001 at 09:47:07PM -0400, Gilles Pelletier wrote: > We're a small group mulling over the respective merits of Debian and > Slackware for a newbie. Of course, since apt-get takes care of installing > dependencies and upgrading the whole installed software, we were leaning > towards Debian. The newbie, even though his concerns for security are > limited, wouldn't have to care too much about it.
So far, so good. > Only a "tiny" problem remains. Potato is not up to date and it's apparently > difficult to upgrade software unless you get patches at specialised places > ( http://kde.tdyc.com for the KDE 2.x serie, for instance. ) You then must > hope the patch is well done. if you want to teach new users, why do you have to be bleeding edge? > We though about installing Woody, but, as you people know, the boot > disquettes don't boot yet. Potato must first be installed and an upgrade > made to Woody. Newbies might not appreciate... > As for Woody, once again, it's going to be out... when it's ready, which > might as well mean in June 2002, one year after Slack was out. that's the whole point of debian - install once and forget about the triple R syndrome - reboot, reformat and reinstall. > How the hell is Volkerding and his small pack managing to put out Slack 8 > with XFree86 4.1.0, kernel 2.4.5, KDE 2.1.2, GNOME 1.4, glibc 2.2.3, > Mozilla, Galeon, Nautilus, ProFTPD, OpenSSH, OpenSSL, mod_ssl, mod_php... > and all the usual utilities, hardly 3 months after Mandrake rushed out > their broken down distro? Has anybody heard that Slackware isn't safe : ) ? don't forget that slackware is a commercial distribution which (according to volkerding himself) has always been profitable. (indeed, patrick was at a loss to understand why windriver had not taken up slackware but left it orphaned). debian developers have to earn their bread elsewhere. more time, more development - quite simple really, when that work is for your livelihood. > Is apt-get really worth this huge delay? We do plan to teach the newbie > some fundamentals. apt-get is enough of a reason to choose debian. i went down the slackware path for a year and i am not a tech type, just a person who wants to use an o-s that is efficient. slackware on the desktop is a nightmare. > BTW, in case you wouldn't know, even newbies like to be cutting edge... > even more so than oldies I'd say : ) can you tell me how you upgrade slackware? how did you upgrade from 7.1 to 8.0? sam -- (Sam Varghese) http://www.gnubies.com
