Re: debian vs RedHat

[Peter Halvorson <pjh@nfuel.com>]

I, for one, would like to hear more about the joys and sorrows of 
Debian and Red Hat Linux.  I've been listening to debian-user for 
a couple months and had just decided in favor of Red Hat.  But, I'm 
still open to hearing the advantages of Debian Linux.

The new 3.0.3 Red Hat release tipped the scales in their favor for the
following reasons (by the way, I'm in no way associated with Red Hat, 
I'm not even a customer yet):

  + Metro-X included in $50 package
    - claims faster for many graphics cards (including mine)
    - support for more of the new cards (not critical to me now)
    - XFree also included, seems like a good package deal to me
  + Email support for 60 days included in $50 package
    - a user email list may be better anyway, I've heard 
      no complaints about debian-user
  + 200 page printed installation and setup book included in 
    $50 package (so sue me, I like bound installation instructions)
  + Official distribution with part of the price supporting further work
    - I still don't know of an official Debian disk, I guess Pacific
      High Tech makes good disks at low prices
    - GNU said it would produce a CD, but I think this has never been
      more than vaporware
  + Live CD (run Unix mostly off the CDRom)
  + Full support for Elf format
    - this definitely seems to be the new standard
    - Red Hat has been Elf for quite a while
    - Debian is coming out with a first Elf release, but I've
      heard many complaints about getting the pre-release Elf
      distributions running and might consider it a 1.0 type 
      release.
  + There seems to be a limited (shrinking?) supply of Debian 
    package maintainers.
  + No boot floppy needed for the 3.0.3 Red Hat package.
  + While I'll pay $50 for the first installation, I expect to
    switch to the cheaper distributions for periodic updates
    (best of both worlds).


A previous post mention some problems with a pre-release Red Hat
system.  Any other complaints?  I supposed the content on debian-user is
biased towards the people who are having trouble, so I don't hear
about the stable Debian systems.

Please don't take this as criticism, these just seem like valid 
reasons to me for currently favoring Red Hat.  (I'm hoping to spark 
a brief discussion rather than a lengthy flame war.)

 


Peter Halvorson
Siemens Power Corp
pjh@nfuel.com