[ale] Debian 3.0 as a server platform?

[Barry Hawkins]

On Wed, Jun 01, 2005 at 07:05:29PM -0400, Thomas Holmquist spake thus:
> Debian, as you may know, does not have the latest packages/programs;
> although this can be troublesome on the desktop, I have no problem
> running older software on my server.
[...]
A number of others have said what Thomas  has said here, so I am not 
singling him out, but all would do well to check on just what Debian 
has avaialable in the way of packages.  Due to some rather stringent 
and at in some cases unfortunate labeling of Debian releases, there 
seems to be much misconception/misinformation regarding software 
available in Debian.

No one who chooses to run Debian stable as their desktop install should 
complain about package availability and updates, any more than they 
should complain about not being able to run gPhoto on RHEL or SLES with
their new USB-capable digital camera.  
Here's why:

Think of the three Debian releases[0] this way:

Stable - rock solid, not prone to change much except for security 
updates; great for servers like the question originally posted here.

Testing - the candidate for the next stable, as up to date as any other 
distro, except for certain areas where the free software guidelines and 
Debian's policies against packaging precompiled binaries in the source 
packages and the like impede the more rapid pace of, say, Fedora or the 
others.  See "what is testing?"[1] and "how it becomes stable"[2] in 
the Debian FAQ for more.  

Unstable - where newly-developed and newly-introduced packages make their 
main debut. if you blindly update any and all software ignoring any dependency 
warnings, you may get yourself in a fix here.

I run the "unstable" release on my PowerBook G4 daily as my main machine, 
and I seldom have issues.  The issues I have had usually iron out with the 
next package upload.  I should add that I use aptitude and actually examine 
the effects of upgrading and installing packages before doing so, which 
greatly enhances your experience over blindly running `apt-get install`.

Also, there are some people for whom Debian will never be a fit, and I 
don't see it trying to become all things to all people, even with the 
changes to our release schedules and so forth.  Debian is still run by 
volunteers, still strongly committed to free software, and committed to 
supporting a variety of architectures.  If none of the above matters to 
you, then it could be that one of the more commercial distros that is 
focused on x86 would be a better choice.

[0] - http://www.debian.org/releases/
[1] - http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-ftparchives#s-testing
[2] - http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-ftparchives#s-frozen

Regards,
-- 
Barry Hawkins
All Things Computed
site: www.alltc.com
weblog: www.yepthatsme.com

Registered Linux User #368650
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available