[mythtv-users] Linux distros.

Nathan Poznick poznick at conwaycorp.net
Fri Apr 25 09:18:18 EDT 2003


Thus spake Ben Bucksch:
> I use Debian since about 2 years and I am getting quite sick of it. 
> apt-get and debconf is nice, but "stable" is constantly too old and 
> "unstable" is unstable, you have to fix things about once a month, and 
> get about 30MB of packages each day, and I don't want that, I don't have 
> time for constantly fixing things.

I've been using Debian for about 4 years, unstable for the last 2.
Stable is just that - stable.  It's going to be rock solid.  Unstable is
as the name implies - sometimes things break.  You might want to look
into testing, it's sort of a happy median between stable and unstable.
Personally, I haven't had to reinstall this machine since I first
installed 4 years ago, and it's completely up-to-date. 

> Hardware install is a *pain* on Debian.

How do you mean?  I've never had any problems with it.  At least that
kudzu crap doesn't pop up and claim it's going to do something useless
because there's no longer a mouse plugged in.  I put in a TV card, add
the module to /etc/modules so it loads on boot, and it's good to go.
Same thing with a sound card.  When I wanted to add a homebrew LIRC
serial IR receiver that I'd built, I installed the lirc packages with
apt, plugged in the receiver, and loaded lirc_serial.o.

> Debian is also very late about security updates when compared to Red Hat.
> Debian might be good for traditional servers (web, NFS, etc.) which run 
> basically unchanged for 2 years, but that's about it IMHO.

This one I don't really understand... Are you using the security updates
for stable?  Yes, Debian security updates for stable typically take a
couple of days to go in, because they have to be reviewed by the
security team, but if you're using unstable, a fixed package is usually
uploaded within an obscenely short time.

-- 
Nathan Poznick <poznick at conwaycorp.net>

Truth will set you free but first it will make you miserable.



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