Re: BDI candidate...

[Chris Brick <cbrick-at-rebelbase.com>]

> eep! .. debian .. err deviant as it is known. 

Very odd.  I've had the exact opposite experience with Debian.  The
package management is so perfect it hurts.  A simple apt-get update &&
apt-get upgrade and your machine is up to date.  Very strange that you
would have so much trouble.  I've never once had a dependency issue,
ever.  It has always grabbed everything I needed and configured it well
enough to run or asked me what to do.  No other linux distro has a
package manager that even comes close, IMHO.  I install apt-rpm on all
my redhat machines so I can actually install software without having to
download every single dependency individually.

I've also been a linux/unix sysadmin for many years and now run debian
on all my servers and a mix of debian/redhat on my workstations.

Has anyone looked at knoppix or other CD based distros?  I've seen some
custom work done to make them install to the drive so they could work
well as a BDI.  Knoppix is debian based, last I checked.

Now theres a thing ... a 
> distribution that is no doubt stable, but comes with almost *nothing* 
> configured as standard. its package management sucks bigtime. dependencies 
> are a nightmare, I spent a week trying to install the standard set of DJB 
> tools (qmail/vpopmail/tcpserver etc) and gave up .. and its installer is not 
> nice. I know once you get it set up is is stable, but getting there is non 
> trivial. it is all too easy to get the package management into a real mess on 
> debian ... I managed it several times without even trying (circular 
> dependencies, conflicts etc)
> 
> I've been doing sys admin on Linux systems for a variety of clients for 3 
> years now, and debian wasted several weeks of my life in frutiless search of 
> trying to get even a basic system going. Say what you will, but Redhat at 
> least installs out of the box (the debian (potato) installer plain refused on 
> 2 out of 3 machines I tried) and is fairly stable once up and running. 

I'll admit the installer is a bit wonky and if you're looking for
stability you have to run the stable branch.  They do have a graphical
installer now which will probably make it into the next major release.

Anyhow, I'm not trying to start a war or anything.  I've just had such a
polar opposite experience with debian that I had to reply.

Chris