Problems with Debian [LWN.net]

Problems with Debian

Posted Dec 3, 2003 16:15 UTC (Wed) by emk (subscriber, #1128)
In reply to: Confused about a couple things by BrucePerens
Parent article: A UserLinux manifesto

I'm a Debian user, and I've encountered several significant, long-term problems with Debian which have been encouraging me to take a long, hard look at Fedora.

Problem 1: Installation, installation, installation. Debian requires more kernel patches, more screwing with drivers, and more general pain than any of the commercial Linux distros--by a significant margin. I can turn out RedHat 9 servers with a few mouse clicks, but Debian frequently descends into a twisty little nightmare of hardware problems.

Problem 2: dpkg. While I adore APT, I strongly dislike dpkg. No matter how many RPMs and dpkgs I build, I get tired of dealing with dh_this, dh_that, dpkg_theother. There's about two dozen of these little tools, and they all work via nasty executional semantics and loads of cryptic text files. RPM relies heavily on declarative semantics and two or three command-line tools. If sysadmins want to make local packages, this whole mess needs to be sorted out. (And merging Connectiva's cool apt-rpm features back into apt-get would be a big plus, too.)

Now, Debian has many enormous virtues--which is why I still use it on about half of my personal machines--but it's still not up to par with ordinary commercial distros for business use.

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Problems with Debian

Posted Dec 3, 2003 16:33 UTC (Wed) by dilinger (subscriber, #2867) [Link]

Point #1 will hopefully be addressed by userlinux, the enterprise debian sub-project, or whatever springs up (once debian accounts are unlocked).
Every company I know that uses debian currently uses custom kernel packages. The kernel images that are distributed w/ debian are generally out of date, and don't include the extra patches/features that redhat kernels include. One of the things we'll be working on is a separate kernel package that looks more like a redhat kernel than a debian kernel. Work must be done to streamline the installation process as well, to actually make use of this new enterprise kernel.

As for point #2, check out cdbs (Common Debian Build System). When I create packages using cdbs, I generally don't have to touch any debhelper commands; as a matter of fact, if you have a standard autotools-using package, you can cut your debian/rules file down to approximately 4 lines. Combine this with the various things available in the devscripts package (debuild & co), and creating debian packages becomes a whole lot easier.