You come to this point at an interesting time. Right now the 'stable' branch (reference your "most stable" comment) is quite dated -- but it is *old* and IMO not really suitable for a desktop system; but many people like it for server use because of it's stability. That said, stable will get a face/feature lift in the not too distant future (movement of current testing -> stable), be mindful that I'm not speaking of tomorrow though, best idea is to subscribe (or review archives) of debian-devel and see what's going on.
Again, IMO, if you want a system roughly comparable (Frankly *exceeding*) the other modern distrobutions you need to be willing to track the unstable/sid branch which always has the latest and greatest stuff (and is also most prone to breakage as a result) -- don't be fooled by the name, for the most part it's very stable *but* you'd best be able to admin your system if you undertake the journey -- in the last year there have been a couple 'big' problems that required a little know how to resolve -- PAM was broken, couldn't login; base-passwd switched passwd/group assignments; X Config broke, so no GUI, KDE/Qt out of synch for 2 weeks (KDE unusable for a while). ... and a few annoying things to smaller groups (libxml was busted for a while); On a desktop, I'd run nothing else (and don't) -- but you do have to be willing to read a couple debian mailing lists and know how to fix stuff if it breaks; Compared to RH 7.3 and the like, installing Debian is harder, but it's not really terrible either; the payoff is once installed you get and incredibly easy to admin/update system v. the other distros; as someone already mentioned dependancey resolution and packages are first rate and system upgrades are as easy as 'apt-get update; apt-get upgrade' as root -- you have to do the kernel seperately but there's is help there in the kernel-package system. My recommendation would be to not take our word for it, but to find a box to play with and run through the install process -- learn to upgrade it and see what you like and what you don't. Hope that helps. On Fri, Mar 01, 2002 at 09:20:50AM +0200, Johan van der Walt wrote: > I am a physicist in the School of Physics of the Potchefstroom > University in South Africa and is one of a few people on campus > using Linux. Have been using Linux now for a couple of years. I am not > a Linux guru and learn about the system as I go along. > > At present I have an older version of RedHat running on my pc. Older, > simply because I still have a project to finish for which I have to > use AIPS. However, I plan (have to) upgrade Linux on my pc as soon as > I am finished with this project. > > I therefore also have to make a choice on which distribution I should > install. Basically I feel that I have to pick one from the following > four: Debian, SuSe, RedHat and Slackware. I already installed RedHat > 7.2 on my notebook to see what it is like. With all due respect one of > the first things that put me off was that I could not find the HOWTO > pages. This made me wonder to what extent does RH cater for the user > that would like to know a bit more about how to do things on the > system. > > My question then is: what makes Debian GNU/Linux different so that I > should use it rather than any of the other distributions? Is Linux not > just Linux? From a scientific point of view I use IRAF and that comes > with Debian which is something I like. However, that certainly cannot > be the only reason for using Debian. > > Someone told me the other day that Debian is the most stable > distribution. Is that so and why? > > > Johan van der Walt > > > > > > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] > -- Hank Marquardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://web.yerpso.net GPG Id: 2BB5E60C Fingerprint: D807 61BC FD18 370A AC1D 3EDF 2BF9 8A2D 2BB5 E60C *** Web Development: PHP, MySQL/PgSQL - Network Admin: Debian/FreeBSD *** PHP Instructor - Intnl. Webmasters Assn./HTML Writers Guild *** Beginning PHP && PHP II -- Starting March 25, 2002 *** See http://www.hwg.org/services/classes
