[Lias] Red Hat substitutes

[Roger Buck]

I first spent approximately three hours googling on debian (exspecially 
compared with other linux distros).

I then used jigdo to D/L the latest Woody stable iso's

I spent approx. 16 hours hands-on installation/configuration of Debian 
GNU/Linux 3.0 (r2) November 21st, 2003.

Test System: Intel P4 HT + GigaByte GA-8IG1000 pro motherboard (Intel 
865G chipset). This is a "modern" hardware system suitable for normal 
home/office use but is by no means "leading edge"

I installed the OS approx six times from scratch.



What I tried:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I first googled for:

  debian 865g problem

and found this source most useful:

  http://luca.pca.it/projects/asus/m3410c.php



Brief findings:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The following is intended to be a minimalist description of _some_ of 
the things I tried. The comments are those of someone with a long unix + 
linux history, but new to Debian.

  1. It was a pain using jigdo to obtain an .iso - But as a means of 
saving bandwidth by discouraging casual users from trying Debian, it's 
probably a success :)

  2. Inbuilt disk partitioning would not work (I had to open a shell and 
do manual fdisk for first-time install)

  3. Transfer from ATA CD (Liteon 52x24x52) to HDD failed part way 
through first-time install - I had to manually mount CD from shell.

  4. Base installation would not recognise on-board NIC (INTEL 82562ET 
10/100).

     Disabled i810 NIC and and installed a "ubiquitous" rtl8139 10/100 
... also not recognised (grrr!)

     Installed a Netgear generic tulip chip set NIC - Works OK

  5. Startx fails with i8100 (agpgart module problems). I tried a 
variety of cards - none work very well - lots of problems and tweaking 
required to get minimal results with any "modern" video card.

  6. Problems recognising modern CD USB/Firewire devices

  7. If sticking to a "standard" distribution, I could see no real 
advantage to using the more powerful apt tools on Debian compared with 
the standard rpm tools familar to most RH users.



Discussion:
~~~~~~~~~~~
The above problems reminded me very much of my experiences installing 
ygassdril/slackware linux distro's in the early to mid nineties :)

After succeeding with a working Debian system, I spent 4-6 hours playing 
around with the "dselect" tool and eventualy decided it was a good thing :)

I spent a couple of hours playing around with "Apt" and found it to be 
very good - but NOT as good as its reputation; In general, I found apt 
works best in "stable" (where it's benefits are least needed) but 
becomes less useful the more you need to work outside the "stable" 
distro (where its benefits would be most useful).

Considering that the distro I was working with was only 6 weeks old and 
despite choosing to install latest 2.4 kernel as install option, I was 
surprised to find that the kernel and many applications were same 
vintage as those running on some old RedHat 7.x and e-smith servers.

I was able to d/l and install new kernel from source (solely to try and 
fix hardware compatibility issues) but I ran into lots of problems doing 
this via apt tools (even when customising config files to use 
backports). Life is too short... and you have to ask whether the cost of 
the time spent learning Debian is sufficient to offset the cost of 
continuing to examine the alternatives.


Summary:
~~~~~~~~
IMHO, Debian seems best suited to an environment where one has the 
luxury of spending a _lot_ of time  "polishing" (compared to RH anyhow).

When compared with RH distro's, the Debian "stable" distribution is a 
couple of years behind what I would have expected. There are good 
reasons for this but I was not convinced they are sufficient - 
especially in a working environment where "years" are more appropriately 
measured in "dog years" ;^)

This is not intended as flame bait and all comments are welcome - As 
mentioned previously in this thread, I am trying a variety of distros 
relative to the thread subject (see above), and hope to post similar 
feedback about them here - YMMV.

R.