[linux-audio-user] A little scared of Debian, was Fresh PC waiting for basic installation - Advice?

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,
eviltwin69 at cableone.net hat gesagt: // eviltwin69 at cableone.net wrote:

> On Fri, 9 Jul 2004 14:50 , anahata <anahata at treewind.co.uk> sent:
> >Initially yes. Once it's all working, Debian's the package management 
> >system is far more bullet proof than rpm.
> 
>     This is why Planet CCRMA uses apt-get for their RadHat distribution.

apt != dpkg !

CCRMA uses apt to check dependencies or rpm packages, which still
are a bit different from deb packages. 

debs have a stronger enforcement of dependencies, which is a love or
hate thing, because managing all this can be very difficult for users.
dpkg ensures that the system always is in a clean state, provided the
packages were built correctly.

The difficulties of handling debs lead to the development of apt,
which just is a tool to resolve dependencies prior to package
installation. (Try "apt-get -s install something")

Regarding user friendly installation of Debian: I consider ease of
installation an very overvalued factor. How often do you install a
Linux system? This isn't Windows. I installed my main Debian system
about six or seven or more years ago using Debian 1.2 and a pre-2.x
kernel. This system has followed me over lots of harddisks, CPUs and
mainboards and kernels, constantly upgraded with pure dpkg and later
apt.

Clean package management is much, much more important than ease of
installation, and Debian simply has the most robust package management
there is. (Maybe beaten by Gentoo, but I'd like to do other work
besides compiling, too. ;)

I'd strongly recommend Debian.

Ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                               _ ______footils.org__