Linux Distributions

[jrv at vanzandt.mv.com (James R. Van Zandt)]

Jerry Feldman asked for comments on distributions.  

I am a Debian developer, which no doubt colors the following...

Debian has both more and fewer packages than Red Hat...

The Red Hat packaging system is a lot easier to learn than the one for
Debian.  Red Hat will allow anyone to upload packages for their
"contrib" section, and a lot of RPMs are available from sites other
than Red Hat and their mirrors.  (This could be considered a security
concern.)

The Debian main, contrib, and non-free sections differ only in their
licenses.  Packages in all three sections are prepared only by "Debian
developers", and some care is taken to check people out before
accepting their packages.  However, by now there are over 300 of us.

As a result of the above, there are quite a few more packages in
Debian (over 1500, including main, contrib, and non-free) than
official Red Hat, but adding the RPMs from other sources would
probably bring the total to more than Debian.

For the most part, an RPM can't have an interactive configuration at
installation time.  This is a good thing, because it lets the whole
distribution be installed in one go, without interruptions.  However,
it's also a bad thing, because there are some configuration parameters
the package just can't figure out for itself.  (The installation
program makes special dispensations for some packages, so the
installer can configure time zones and networking, for example.
However, you can't build this kind of configuration into an ordinary
RPM.)  A Red Hat installation is a lot smoother than a Debian
installation.  However, I am skeptical about how complete it really
is.  

I advise new users to install Red Hat first, but that they should
consider switching to Debian later.

Red Hat has supported three architectures for quite a while now (i386,
alpha, and sparc).  Debian has released distributions for only i386 so
far, but I believe Debian 2.1 will support alpha and m68k as well.
ppc and sparc support is not yet ready for prime time.

		      - Jim Van Zandt
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