Debian....

[bseltzer]

just for grins, I installed Debian Etch on a spare disk I has laying around, and to be completely candid, the exercise was a waste of time and resources.

First off, the installation process is reminiscent of the state of the art back around RH6. None the less, I managed to muddle through.

Then there were all sorts of difficulties trying to get updates for what I'd installed. For all the hoopla, the much touted "apt-get" doesn't do a very respectable job dealing with dependencies. This was a particular issue when trying to install NVIDIA drivers that just might work with beryl.

I managed to get over that hump as well, only to discover the Debian repository for beryl was corrupted or otherwise unavailable. What fun....

I finally got to a mirror for the beryl stuff, and although it did indeed install, and wonder of wonders, actually run.... well sort of. Seems gnome-terminal doesn't do transparent backgrounds in Debian under beryl. Instead, when you move a terminal window, the piece of background behind it moves with it until you release the window frame, and then, and only then do you get the part of the background that is now behind the terminal showing through.

Just to add insult to injury, when I tried to register for the Debian equivalent of this forum, looking for help with the above issue, I found it near impossible to get successfully registered, and when I did, the activation email I was supposed to get never materialized.

The next time I hear someone making an unfavorable comparison between Fedora and Debian, it will take a masterful exhibition of self control to avoid throttling the idiot where he or she stands.

Thanks for letting me vent.... And believe me, Fedora, warts and all, is still head and shoulders above any of the few other distro's I've tried

regards,
Bert

[JN4OldSchool]

Originally Posted by bseltzer

just for grins, I installed Debian Etch on a spare disk I has laying around, and to be completely candid, the exercise was a waste of time and resources.

First off, the installation process is reminiscent of the state of the art back around RH6. None the less, I managed to muddle through.

Then there were all sorts of difficulties trying to get updates for what I'd installed. For all the hoopla, the much touted "apt-get" doesn't do a very respectable job dealing with dependencies. This was a particular issue when trying to install NVIDIA drivers that just might work with beryl.

I managed to get over that hump as well, only to discover the Debian repository for beryl was corrupted or otherwise unavailable. What fun....

I finally got to a mirror for the beryl stuff, and although it did indeed install, and wonder of wonders, actually run.... well sort of. Seems gnome-terminal doesn't do transparent backgrounds in Debian under beryl. Instead, when you move a terminal window, the piece of background behind it moves with it until you release the window frame, and then, and only then do you get the part of the background that is now behind the terminal showing through.

Just to add insult to injury, when I tried to register for the Debian equivalent of this forum, looking for help with the above issue, I found it near impossible to get successfully registered, and when I did, the activation email I was supposed to get never materialized.

The next time I hear someone making an unfavorable comparison between Fedora and Debian, it will take a masterful exhibition of self control to avoid throttling the idiot where he or she stands.

Thanks for letting me vent.... And believe me, Fedora, warts and all, is still head and shoulders above any of the few other distro's I've tried

regards,
Bert

You were doing OK till you got to the red part. Hey, we all have our opinions. You had a bad time with debian. This is very unusual and I can tell you for a fact that debian is probably the most "perfect" distro out there in the sense that it is the very essence of Linux. It is hassle free, always works and everything is standard. Of course I wont convince you of this myself and I really do regret your bad experience with it. But I wouldnt be too hasty to put the blame on debian. There are many here, in a Fedora forum, who will back up what I say. I understand your enthusiasm for Fedora and trying to show how you feel it is the best distro going. I agree. I am a Fedora man. But dont trash debian, just chalk it up to a bad experience and walk away. Hopefully someday you can revisit it and maybe decide otherwise.

[Seve]

Hello Bert:
Sorry to hear about your mis-fortunes with Debian.
I'm not sure you will get much of a shoulder to cry on here with a number of seasoned users who have it installed.

So batten down the hatches


Edit :

Too late

Seve

[JN4OldSchool]

Originally Posted by Seve

Hello Bert:
Sorry to hear about your mis-fortunes with Debian.
I'm not sure you will get much of a shoulder to cry on here with a number of seasoned users who have it installed.

So batten down the hatches


Edit :

Too late

Seve

lol, hey, I went easy!

[Seve]

Originally Posted by JN4OldSchool

lol, hey, I went easy!

Hello JN4:
I know you did, you were very eloquent
I must agree, Debian is rock solid and I really can't find or say anything Negative about it ?
Just my $0.02

Seve

[JN4OldSchool]

Originally Posted by Seve

Hello JN4:
I know you did, you were very eloquent
I must agree, Debian is rock solid and I really can't find or say anything Negative about it ?
Just my $0.02

Seve

The biggest (and only) negative thing I can say about etch is it is just damn boring! No updates, no breakdowns, no problems. It just sits there. It like just always works. Like driving a Ford sedan. This is why I stay with Fedora. Debian just leaves me...bored...

[Seve]

Originally Posted by JN4OldSchool

The biggest (and only) negative thing I can say about etch is it is just damn boring! No updates, no breakdowns, no problems. It just sits there. It like just always works. Like driving a Ford sedan. This is why I stay with Fedora. Debian just leaves me...bored...

Hello JN4:
You know
You are absolutely dead on ..... the dang thing is boring.
Crap .. it just works fine all the time and as you mentioned, seldom are there any updates and when they do appear .... gosh they work just fine.

Seve

[Thetargos]

Originally Posted by JN4OldSchool

The biggest (and only) negative thing I can say about etch is it is just damn boring! No updates, no breakdowns, no problems. It just sits there. It like just always works. Like driving a Ford sedan. This is why I stay with Fedora. Debian just leaves me...bored...

Hehehe...

You should then run Gentoo or LFS

Edit

I was gonna make another post, but figured why when I can just edit this one.

My experiences with Debian are pretty much standard. Installation was reasonably easy (easy != beautiful, like Fedora, Xandros, Ubuntu, SuSE)... System updates were OK, etc. My main grievance with it was when trying to use the latest packages available, and then something would brake with apt and updates. I could walk around the issues, and nothing would happen, but why would that has to happen, is beyond me (especially when gotten from the much touted apt-get repositories). One thing is for sure: apt-get is faster than Yum, and since it idoesn't fetch every time the list of packages, unless explicitly told to, for installing packages is faster, for installing updates, YUM runs cyrcles around apt-get as it will THEN have to fetch the updated lists and all... One thing for the other.

Generally I like more (know better how?) to work with RPMs than Debs, call it personal preference, also RH's tools have always been sexier

[Dan]

Hmmm.

I'm Posting this from a picture-perfect Debian Etch install. (one of three systems in triple boot configuration on this laptop -- including F7)

On the whole ... No complaints. I'm pretty pleased with it.

http://www.fedoraforum.org/gallery/showimage.php?i=3082


Dan

[bob]

Jeez, even I installed the fool thing and had it up and running in less than a millennium.

[sailor]

Debian 4.0 did not work for me...
but that is what you can run into from time to time...I'll try again another time.
Fedora does not work for some, I have never had much problem with it from FC 1 thru Fedora 7

[RupertPupkin]

Originally Posted by bseltzer

just for grins, I installed Debian Etch on a spare disk I has laying around, and to be completely candid, the exercise was a waste of time and resources.

First off, the installation process is reminiscent of the state of the art back around RH6.

I think "byzantine" is the word I would use to describe Debian's install process.

My experiences with Debian have been similar to yours. I've tried installing it three different times (the latest attempt being with Etch), each time it screwed up my network settings, screwed up a lot of package dependencies, and generally made a mess of things. I will say one thing for Debian: it always makes me appreciate the Red Hat/Fedora way of doing things. I really do think we have the best distro here, in Fedora. If I were forced at gunpoint to use another distro, I'd pick Slackware, not Debian.

[Dan]

Well, I knew if I played with it long enough ...

I've just borked my Debian/Gnome account. A word to the wise. xpenguins and xpenguins Gnome Applet did not play well with my installation.

Dang!


Dan

[Dan]

Recovery complete. It appears the Gnome applet was the culprit. All fixed. <....>

[Thetargos]

I hope there is a Yum update soon. For the time being I have refrained from installing more packages (other than the ones I really need) with Yum, for all the rest, there's always good-ol 'rpm'