Johan van der Walt([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is reported to have said: > 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. --snip-- > > 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. > I started out using Slackware, then redhat, then suse 7-8 years ago. I liked them all except redhat. I had Slackware and Redhat running on the same system and redhat was a nightmare (then, now?). I dropped redhat and installed Debian. Kept both updated over a 2-3 year period and then Debian came out with an upgrading system that made it so easy to upgrade that, looking back, I wonder why anyone would use any other dist.
I now have Debian running on 4 boxen. The ability to have a box upgraded to different levels, (ie stable, testing, or unstable) allows me to run stable on sensitive boxes and testing/unstable on others. All of them are upgraded weekly with apt-get, the upgrading tool. When I want to upgrade a box from one level to the next I do not have to erase all of the old level's software. Apt-get upgrades the system 'while the system is being used by users'. I am not aware of any other dist that does this. Note: I am upgrading my testing box while I am writing the mail on it. > Someone told me the other day that Debian is the most stable > distribution. Is that so and why? Because Debian developers will not release new software to stable unless it works! This bothers some but in reality I don't understand why. The stable distribution can, using apt-get, be upgraded to many of the packages in the higher releases if you work at it. Bottom line is that keeping a vital system running is far easier on Debian then on any other distribution I have used. If you check the http://www.lwn.net site you will find that when security updates come out, Debian is ususlly the first to have implemented them. This is where a weekly update makes Debian shine. The reliability of Debian is covered nicely in an article "The Debian Story: The Importance of a Non-Comercial Linux" in the March 2002 issue of Linux Magazine. Companies like HP and IBM have switched to Debian. I suggest a read of that article. I believe it is available on line. Hope this helps. Wayne -- All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors. _______________________________________________________
