Distro comparison

[Derek Martin]

On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 01:01:51PM +0000, dsr at tao.merseine.nu wrote:
> > Well, I don't know that a year and a half is "vastly out of date", but I 
> > _am_ installing a newer OS, so I've admitted defeat there.
> 
> This is *precisely* the reason I love Debian so much.

I think David's issue (and mine, if I'm correct) is that if the system
still works, you shouldn't ever have to install a new version of the
OS.  In practice, this just doesn't work out.  Eventually, there comes
a time when you need to upgrade some piece of software, and to do so
would cause a cascading dependency nightmare.

For example, maybe you need to run the latest klyx.  To do so, you
need to upgrade KDE.  But to do that, you need to upgrade a few dozen
supporting libraries...  Blah blah blah.

When this happens, you have three choices: do nothing (which is always
a valid choice in every situation, if you can stomach the
consequences), upgrade everything by hand, or upgrade the OS.  Most of
the time, none of these are really desireable.

> As of 2.0 (it may have "after 1.3"), Debian committed to never
> leaving machines without a smooth, free upgrade path unless the
> entire architecture was no longer being supported.

This is fine and dandy, but still requires you to upgrade your
machine.  Granted, if you have a fast Internet connection, or a local
mirror, the process is relatively painless and smooth for Debian, most
of the time.  But, multiply that by 1000 machines, and it still sucks.

-- 
Derek D. Martin
http://www.pizzashack.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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