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> I think Debian is one of the few Linux distros that can truly call itself an OS, as opposed to just a "distro" What do you mean by this? Does this mean there

> I think Debian is one of the few Linux distros that can truly call itself an OS, as opposed to just a "distro" What do you mean by this? Does this mean there's some sort of "value added" that other distros don't have? Over the years I've migrated from Slackware to Fedora primarily because of their stated goal to deviate from upstream as little as possible, but I'm always willing to explore.

davegauer 10y ago
Can you elaborate on the move from Slackware? Fedora's philosophy is excellent and perhaps better documented, but I always thought Slackware was as close to pure upstream source as you could practically get in a single distribution.
- stinkytaco 10y ago
  Slackware is what you would get if you compiled everything yourself. Indeed its package manager (slackpkg) is really just a streamlined compiler, rather than a typical binary distribution mechanism. But Slackware is also what you would get if you compiled a specific set of packages from source, and not any others. There is a decent community of packagers at Slackbuilds that has most of the big stuff, but compiling is a hassle if it's not there. Even then, if you want something like Gnome, be prepared to spend a couple of hours getting it going from the Slackbuilds packages. It also lags behind in adopting new technologies that make things easier for the users (udev and wicd pop into my memory immediately). I started slowly drifting away from Slackware because 10-15 years ago, it was easier to get Red Hat/Fedora/Ubuntu working on my laptop, with support for things like USB thumb drives and wireless (wicd wasn't even added to slackware extras until long past when Ubuntu had this problem solved in the default installation). Most packages are mature enough to do this for themselves now, but at the time distros needed to do a fair amount of heavy lifting in terms of hardware detection and configuration to make things smooth for end users. That said, if I ever needed to get help with a program, I knew I could go straight to the project's forums because what I had installed was what they distributed, not something modified by a package maintainer. This is not meant as a criticism of Slackware, their philosophy is well established and their community will happily tell you that Open Source is about choice and point you in the direction of something that would suit you better if their philosophy doesn't meet your needs. Fedora seemed to find that balance for me. Packages were closer to upstream so I could get help from a variety of places with minimal hassle, but it still included modern niceties and its community was much larger.
  - groovy2shoes 10y ago
    slackpkg itself actually does just wget and install binary packages. You may be thinking of sbopkg or sbotools which grab SlackBuild scripts and source tarballs from slackbuilds.org, builds and installs the resulting packages. They are extremely useful tools every slacker should have, but they're third-party (as is slackbuilds.org) and not officially a part of Slackware.
maheart 10y ago
Debian is much more than just a collection of packages: - It has a social contract, which it follows (e.g. they take software licensing seriously, developers attempt to upstream changes) - It has many, many developers (~1000). That is, the long-term health of the project doesn't hinge on one or two people. Although more developers are always needed and welcome. - Debian attempts to integrate packages together (e.g. the Nagios package configures Apache for you) - Debian has a lively community around it. Companies care about it (e.g. see hardware donations, money donations for things like Debian LTS, and Valve adopting Debian). - Debian leads the FOSS community in many initiatives (currently Reproducible builds)

davegauer 10y ago

Can you elaborate on the move from Slackware? Fedora's philosophy is excellent and perhaps better documented, but I always thought Slackware was as close to pure upstream source as you could practically get in a single distribution.

stinkytaco 10y ago
Slackware is what you would get if you compiled everything yourself. Indeed its package manager (slackpkg) is really just a streamlined compiler, rather than a typical binary distribution mechanism. But Slackware is also what you would get if you compiled a specific set of packages from source, and not any others. There is a decent community of packagers at Slackbuilds that has most of the big stuff, but compiling is a hassle if it's not there. Even then, if you want something like Gnome, be prepared to spend a couple of hours getting it going from the Slackbuilds packages. It also lags behind in adopting new technologies that make things easier for the users (udev and wicd pop into my memory immediately). I started slowly drifting away from Slackware because 10-15 years ago, it was easier to get Red Hat/Fedora/Ubuntu working on my laptop, with support for things like USB thumb drives and wireless (wicd wasn't even added to slackware extras until long past when Ubuntu had this problem solved in the default installation). Most packages are mature enough to do this for themselves now, but at the time distros needed to do a fair amount of heavy lifting in terms of hardware detection and configuration to make things smooth for end users. That said, if I ever needed to get help with a program, I knew I could go straight to the project's forums because what I had installed was what they distributed, not something modified by a package maintainer. This is not meant as a criticism of Slackware, their philosophy is well established and their community will happily tell you that Open Source is about choice and point you in the direction of something that would suit you better if their philosophy doesn't meet your needs. Fedora seemed to find that balance for me. Packages were closer to upstream so I could get help from a variety of places with minimal hassle, but it still included modern niceties and its community was much larger.
- groovy2shoes 10y ago
  slackpkg itself actually does just wget and install binary packages. You may be thinking of sbopkg or sbotools which grab SlackBuild scripts and source tarballs from slackbuilds.org, builds and installs the resulting packages. They are extremely useful tools every slacker should have, but they're third-party (as is slackbuilds.org) and not officially a part of Slackware.

maheart 10y ago

Debian is much more than just a collection of packages: - It has a social contract, which it follows (e.g. they take software licensing seriously, developers attempt to upstream changes) - It has many, many developers (~1000). That is, the long-term health of the project doesn't hinge on one or two people. Although more developers are always needed and welcome. - Debian attempts to integrate packages together (e.g. the Nagios package configures Apache for you) - Debian has a lively community around it. Companies care about it (e.g. see hardware donations, money donations for things like Debian LTS, and Valve adopting Debian). - Debian leads the FOSS community in many initiatives (currently Reproducible builds)