On Wed, May 08, 2002 at 07:09:13PM -0500, Glen Lee Edwards wrote: | Hi, | | I've been a loyal Red Hat user for the last 4 or 5 years. Their recent | distributions will no longer install on all my computers because they now | require more than 16 Meg RAM. I have a few questions: | | The Debian web site says that Debian will install on 12 Meg RAM. Is that | information current?
I don't know about *install*, but it certainly *runs* (and sometimes
crawls :-)) on 8MB.
(I couldn't get my 8MB clunker to boot from a cd and didn't have any
floppies handy so I stuffed the hd in a bigger machine for the
install. Be aware that with only 8MB RAM package updates and many
other operations cause lots of thrashing. 16MB would be much better
:-)).
| What are the main differences between Debian and Red Hat
Policy is the first difference.
Availability and findability and quality of packages is next.
I recently had to install RH 7.2 on a machine, and I saw first-hand
how badly RH is organized. Config files are strewn about the FS, but
on debian they are always in /etc/<pkgname>. The dependencies in
debian packages are much saner too -- for example try installing
python2 on a headless RH box *without* also installing the X server
and X font server.
As far as availability and findability goes, RH has sendmail as the
only MTA. Debian has sendmail, exim, postfix, ssmtp, and I'm sure
there are others as well. The same goes for many other tools. When I
made the switch from RH to Debian I was amazed to find included on the
cd many little-known programs I had failed to compile on my RH system.
| (I'm assuming there are a few current or ex-Red Hat users here)?
Yep. RH 7.0 pushed me over the edge (I only started with 5.2 which
didn't like my vid. card and then 6.1).
| Does Debian support the old Sound Blaster Pro CDRoms (sbpcd module)?
It's in the kernel source and image packages. I presume it works :-).
(that's a kernel thing, really, and all distros should be the same wrt
it)
| How well does FVWM run on Debian systems? I currently build FVWM
| rpms for Red Hat.
I use sawfish but I have fvwm installed just in case something goes
wack with sawfish. It runs, but I can't speak for how "well" because
I don't usually use it.
| I need to run servers on two 16 Meg RAM boxes - DNS and mail mainly.
I recommend running spamassassin with your mail service. It won't
take kindly to low memory (it uses around 8-9MB on my machine) though
some people run it on a 486 with 32MB RAM. (I think those are
terminal machines with relatively low volumes of mail) You can have
'spamd' running on a different machine than your MTA, though.
| X would be nice, but I usually use X forwarding on those boxes to
| another one that can handle the load (500 MHZ, 512 Meg RAM).
|
| Any thoughts or suggestions you have will be appreciated. I need to
| run a Linux distribution that will work as both a server and a desk
| top environment.
Debian is up to the job, and you won't regret the conversion. Just
take it one machine at a time, stick with it and ask this list even
stupid questions. You'll get the hang of debian's organization and
how to use the package management tools and then you'll enjoy it.
| And I need one that will remain loyal to its customer base,
| including those with low resource PCs.
Debian is it's customer base. Since we are the ones who build the
system, we can determine what goes into it and what it requires. Oh,
yeah, you'll never need to re-install either. Some people have had
'bo' (one of the earlier releases) machines that haven't seen an
installation cd since those days. The upgrade process is quite smooth
in comparision to other OSes.
-D
--
How to shoot yourself in the foot with Java:
You find that Microsoft and Sun have released incompatible class
libraries both implementing Gun objects. You then find that although
there are plenty of feet objects implemented in the past in many other
languages, you cannot get access to one. But seeing as Java is so cool,
you don't care and go around shooting anything else you can find.
(written by Mark Hammond)
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