"Johan" == Johan van der Walt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Johan> My question then is: what makes Debian GNU/Linux different
Johan> so that I should use it rather than any of the other
Johan> distributions? Is Linux not just Linux? From a scientific
Johan> point of view I use IRAF and that comes with Debian which
Johan> is something I like. However, that certainly cannot be the
Johan> only reason for using Debian.
Why Debian?
- It's very easy to upgrade and maintain your system
- It has a wide variety of packages to use
- It's a completely free distribution run by volunteers
Why not Debian?
- Long release cycles result in a pretty outdated stable distribution
- Installation of Debian is hardly slick (but you do it just once ;-)
- It's a completely free distribution run by volunteers
Personally, I switched to Debian on my laptop last year after running
Slackware for well over 6 years. I tried Suse, Mandrake and Redhat but
found they held my hand too tightly (I mean, I was a Slackware
bigot!). I hated the installer, but the system is a pleasure to use. I
also find the idea of using a volunteer driven distribution politcally
appealing.
Good luck. They them all out, and pick the one you like. The only
thing I'd ask you to do is not give up on Debian because of the
installation process. You will probably want to install a base Potato
(stable) and upgrade to woody (testing).
Cheers!
Shyamal
