4 ms·

> To a large extent this is also the Debian model, which is a lot more integrated than many Linux distributions (...) Is there anything that Debian does with r

by tvon 16y ago

> To a large extent this is also the Debian model, which is a lot more integrated than many Linux distributions (...) Is there anything that Debian does with regards to integration that Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS/RHEL, and even Gentoo don't do?

thristian 16y ago
A colleague was telling me yesterday that the official Apache Tomcat packages for CentOS/RHEL keep all their runtime temporary files in /usr/share/tomcat; that's the sort of thing that would never be allowed in a Debian package (runtime state belongs in /var). Another example: The Debian packaging guidelines demand that every executable have a man page available, even if the upstream project doesn't supply one. They're not always as complete and comprehensive as one might hope, but they're often enough to give you the general gist of what a command is supposed to do, and how to use it. Yet another example: Debian has an 'alternatives' system, by which you can configure the system and tell it that your preferred terminal emulator is 'xterm', your preferred text-editor is pico, etc. (this extends to man pages too - if you make "x-terminal-emulator" point at xterm, then "man x-terminal-emulator" will give you the xterm man page). Every package that Debian ships that is able to spawn a terminal emulator in some way is required to launch x-terminal-emulator rather than hard-coding xterm or rxvt or whatever. The downside to all this is that if you know how to configure/administer package X on RedHat or FreeBSD, you might get lost trying to find where the package keeps its stuff in Debian. The upside is that if you know how to configure/administer package X on Debian, you should find it pretty easy to configure/administer packages Y and Z as well. One more example: The last time I installed fetchmail on RedHat, I wound up having to create /root/.fetchmailrc and write my own cronjob to run it. The last time I installed fetchmail on Debian, it already came with an /etc/init.d script that would do all the periodic checking for me, all I had to do was create an "/etc/fetchmailrc" file (like any other system service) and start it up (like any other system service). Debian's integration goes far, far beyond any other distro I've seen.
- sswam 16y ago
  yea, Debian is goodness. I think Ubuntu inherits most of that goodness, but the packaging seems to be a little more flakey. I've had more dist-upgrade failures in Ubuntu than with Debian. FWIW as of now, I use Debian on servers, and Ubuntu on desktops. I wouldn't use any distro other than Debian for a server.

by tvon 16y ago

thristian 16y ago

A colleague was telling me yesterday that the official Apache Tomcat packages for CentOS/RHEL keep all their runtime temporary files in /usr/share/tomcat; that's the sort of thing that would never be allowed in a Debian package (runtime state belongs in /var). Another example: The Debian packaging guidelines demand that every executable have a man page available, even if the upstream project doesn't supply one. They're not always as complete and comprehensive as one might hope, but they're often enough to give you the general gist of what a command is supposed to do, and how to use it. Yet another example: Debian has an 'alternatives' system, by which you can configure the system and tell it that your preferred terminal emulator is 'xterm', your preferred text-editor is pico, etc. (this extends to man pages too - if you make "x-terminal-emulator" point at xterm, then "man x-terminal-emulator" will give you the xterm man page). Every package that Debian ships that is able to spawn a terminal emulator in some way is required to launch x-terminal-emulator rather than hard-coding xterm or rxvt or whatever. The downside to all this is that if you know how to configure/administer package X on RedHat or FreeBSD, you might get lost trying to find where the package keeps its stuff in Debian. The upside is that if you know how to configure/administer package X on Debian, you should find it pretty easy to configure/administer packages Y and Z as well. One more example: The last time I installed fetchmail on RedHat, I wound up having to create /root/.fetchmailrc and write my own cronjob to run it. The last time I installed fetchmail on Debian, it already came with an /etc/init.d script that would do all the periodic checking for me, all I had to do was create an "/etc/fetchmailrc" file (like any other system service) and start it up (like any other system service). Debian's integration goes far, far beyond any other distro I've seen.

sswam 16y ago
yea, Debian is goodness. I think Ubuntu inherits most of that goodness, but the packaging seems to be a little more flakey. I've had more dist-upgrade failures in Ubuntu than with Debian. FWIW as of now, I use Debian on servers, and Ubuntu on desktops. I wouldn't use any distro other than Debian for a server.