[mythtv-users] Linux distros.

[josephc]

On Fri, 25 Apr 2003, Nathan Poznick wrote:

> 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.

A little off topic, but that is why Debian is having a hard time breaking 
into the server market. Security updates from Red Hat netowrk beat Debain 
stable updates by sometimes days. In the case of the Sendmail and Samba 
exploits, that would have been disasterous for an admin.

Debian is fine from a hobbyists point of view, however.

> 
>