Don't settle for less
Written: Jun 09 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Extremely robust, flexible and powerful
Cons: Demands a high level of skill; installation can be painful
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| sab39's Full Review: Debian GNU |
When choosing an operating system it is always necessary to make a tradeoff. Based on your level of computer experience, you may demand a highly configurable system where you can tweak every detail, or prefer a system which doesn't ask you any questions and holds your hand through common operations. You may or may not be prepared to tolerate your system crashing once every few days... or once every few hours.
Debian is definitely not for people who want a system that holds your hand. The installation process alone is enough to deter most new users. However, for an experienced user who is willing to take time to learn the system, the power and reliability of this distribution shines through very fast.
I have used Debian for over 2 years and in that time I have experienced 3 operating system crashes. One was due to a hard drive failure, one was due to having chosen the wrong X server configuration, and the third was due to an incompatible network card. This is despite having recompiled my kernel several times, tweaked many aspects of configuration files, and doing almost daily updates from the so-called "unstable" distribution.
Where other distributions attempt to hide the complexity of configuration files behind simple interfaces, Debian assumes a certain level of willingness to learn by making the configuration files directly available. The advantages of this approach become clear if you need to make a change that the simple interface does not support - on Red Hat I once had a configuration tool crash every time I ran it because I had made a change it couldn't understand in one of the configuration files.
I couldn't let a review of Debian go by without mentioning apt-get. This amazing tool provides the functionality of a program installer and operating system upgrade mechanism in one. For example, if you wish to install the latest version of the apache webserver, the simple command "apt-get install apache" will not only download and install apache itself, but also determine automatically if you are missing any other programs that apache requires and install those too. In addition, "apt-get dist-upgrade" will upgrade every program installed on your system to the latest version.
In summary - if you are prepared to put in a lot of effort to learn a system, but you demand the very best, then get Debian. You won't be disappointed.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
sab39
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Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 5 members
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