Debian <-> Fedora [LWN.net]

Debian is Stronger Than Fedora

Posted May 7, 2004 2:24 UTC (Fri) by gfolkert (guest, #21427) [Link]

Kurt said sumpin' like 'dis:

Debian has a strong community and weak distro

Really?
Are you able to choose your level of bleeding edge?

Stable
Testing
Unstable
Experimental
Debian Snapshot

Debian Stable (currently called Woody) means Stable Packages. No longer Being Developed, in Maintenance Mode

Testing, the next version of Debian Stable, currently called Sarge. Is supposed to be always fully installable... in theory. Doing very well as of late. It has a prety Stable, but regularly updated package list. Meaning newer versions are always possible to get into Sarge until the freeze happen. Currently being close to finish work all the time. Yes some packages are *WAY* behind... but that is more problem of the developement if Debian, being so strict in Policy.

Unstable, has NO bearing on the uptimes/usability/strength of the version. Called Sid, will always be Sid. The name unstable terms the frequency as to how often the packages versions and areas change. There have been time where I have seen 1100 packages make it through Debian Incoming in a single day. It is what you (I) might term, the nearly cutting edge of Distros. Nearly always having the latest and greatest stuff (or usually not far behind). It also means, at times it does break. Like the recent GDM Fiasco. But in very short order, those things are worked out, or workarounds are discovered and implemented. Be warned, not for the faint of heart or Technically in-ept.

Experimental, simply is not a complete level of the distro. It is for those things that are not acceptable in unstable that could possibly BREAK policy and also break Sid far too much. For development of new techniques for package management, new styles of updates for certain "known to be a PITA to upgrade" packages (postgresql comes to mind). This is like a stapled on version of Debian. It has been a savior to some, like when the Debian X-Force had an Experimental version of XFree86 v4.3.0-pre1vds1 (or something like that) available through Branden's people.d.o site. Other things in experimental right now are new versions of dpkg and apt, hardly something to put in unstable until after Sarge is released. Things like this.

Snapshot.Debian.Net: This archive location is what you will be able to use should you want something like Sid-from-two-weeks-ago. Current, but not quite. You will still get all the heartache of Sid, but you have the option of updating those piece broke in the 2 week old version to the newest (hopefully) unbroken state now, from regular archives.

So don't give me *ANY* of the cruft about it being a Weak Distribution. Policy is what makes Debian STRONG. STRONG Community, STRONG Distribution.

Kurt, also said sumpin' like 'dis:

Fedora has a Weak Community and Strong Ddistro

Mainly because there is a FOR PROFIT entity trying the same approach as Debian.

Also, there are other things that makes Fedora have a weak community. One in particular that Debian has the Fedora doesn't: The Debian Social Contract. Yes the Social Contract. Go read it a minute. Also the Debian Free Software Guide is there, too.

Oh, let's see, how about Packaging Policy and Requirements explicitly outlined in The Debian Policy Manual. The Abstract Reads: This manual describes the policy requirements for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. This includes the structure and contents of the Debian archive and several design issues of the operating system, as well as technical requirements that each package must satisfy to be included in the distribution. I think this is an excellent reason why Debian is a Strong Distro as compared to any other distro.

Matter of FACT, I'd like you to show me where you can find the Fedora Policy Manual. Show me where the users of Fedora are able to choose what is and is not in the Packaging list. Also, the overlap of packages in Fedora are mind numbing (from the horror stories I've heard). Packaging in such large packages is heavily frowned upon, packages like exim for instance have many feature packages in it. Therefore updating it is much easier. Take for instance this listing of Exim v4's packages:

exim4 - An MTA (Mail Transport Agent)
exim4-base - EXperimental Internal Mailer -- a Mail Transport Agent
exim4-config - Debian configuration for exim4
exim4-daemon-heavy - Exim (v4) with extended features, including exiscan-acl
exim4-daemon-light - Lightweight version of the Exim (v4) MTA
exim4-doc-html - Documentation for Exim v4 in html format
exim4-doc-info - Documentation for Exim v4 in info format
eximon4 - X monitor for the Exim (v4) mail transport agent

You don't get that kind of packaging in Fedora. Sure you have apt and yum for rpm, but the packaging is still bulky. Now, let's get of the subject of packaging, as that is always a hot topic. Let's go on to the topic of platform support. Okay, what platforms is Fedora available for? Debian is available for:

Alpha (alpha) (DEC/Compaq/HP)
AMD64 (SOON to be released)
ARM (arm)
HP PA-RISC (hppa) (Hewlett-Packard)
Intel x86 / IA-32 (i386)
IA-64 (ia64)
MIPS CPUs (mips and mipsel)
Motorola 68k (m68k)
Motorola/IBM PowerPC (powerpc)
S/390 (s390)
Sun SPARC (sparc)
SuperH (sh) (SOON to be released)

How many does Fedora support? Show me the answer.

I guess you'll probably never respond... which is too bad.