[techtalk] newbie questions

[Laurel Fan]

Excerpts from linuxchix: 13-Oct-99 Re: [techtalk] newbie quest.. by
Beverly Guillermo at home.c 
> Did you hear that VA Linux, O'Reilly, and SGI are preparing to package
> Debian in the future to sell in Retail stores?  I haven't been to clear
> about how the volunteers/maintainers feel about this move but it looks
> pretty good for $19.95, you get Debian and the book Installing Debian/Gnu
> Linux published by O'Reilly and tech support provided by VA.

>From the debian-devel mailing list the general attitude seems to be "Oh,
that's good.  We'll get more users.  I don't particularly care, since I
don't need any more Debian CDs, the book is free on the web, and I dont
need tech support"
  
> > 5) It sticks to the Unix philosophy more than some other distros.  It
> > doesn't rely on flaky graphical configuration tools, the output of a
> > program can be the input of a program, etc.
>  
> What about Slackware? ;)  I can't wait until version 7.0 comes out of
> Slack.

Yes, I know.  I was mostly referring to Redhat, caldera, etc.  I don't
like slackware because I like debian's package management better :)
  
> > Debian may not be for you if:
> > 
> > 1) You don't want to use the command line.
>  
> You can install a X server and window manager just as easily. =)

True.  but 2.1 doesn't come with KDE and all those k* things, so its
easier to do almost everything from the command line, whether in X or
not.
  
> > 2) You want to use a lot of software that is considered non-free by Debian.
>  
> It may not be available on the Debian distribution disks but it doesn't
> stop you from installing the software. =)

Yeah.  It does make it more difficult to find .debs.  The procedure to
get pine and get it in the packaging system is basically to build your
own pine package (since pine doesnt allow binary-only distribution).
  
> > 4) You don't want a packaging system.
>  
> Of course, you don't have to use it. =)

True. but then what's the point of using Debian? :)


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