Maybe time for a new distro?

[Randy Edwards]

> Some would consider this a character flaw, I know, and

    Don't worry about it; there are far worse character flaws... :-)

> However, I've been thinking recently of switching to a different distro,
> mostly for "because" reasons and partially to just try other things. 
> I've also got a fair amount of Debian experience, FWIW.

    I've gone through several iterations of that.  After playing around with 
a distro for a while, I wind up giving up on it and going back to Debian.

<babble mode=ON>
    In my warped worldview, there are only two distros: Debian and Red Hat.

    Sure, there are lots of other really slick distros (e.g. Lycoris), but 
what I'm interested in is software -- usually the software that isn't 
included in the distro.

    If I read about something cool I want to be able to go to its web site 
and grab it quick.  >90% of the time, it'll be packaged in only RH *.rpm 
and/or *.deb formats (or a simple apt-get will install it because some 
Debian developer has already packaged it).  Sure, I can d/l the tarball and 
type "make; make install" just as well as the next person, but packages are 
slick and were invented for a reason.  And I know about alien, but that 
always impresses me as a kludge.

    Thus my statement about there being only two distros.  I understand RH 
wanting to get out of the end-user-focused shrinkwrap business, but I wonder 
if they're making a larger mistake by losing a lot of people and goodwill 
along the way.  A year or so ago I wondered if Debian was in decline or not; 
it seemed as if the commercial distros were bypassing it.  Now, Debian seems 
to have a great deal of renewed vigor and the new installer to be released 
in the next version promises to tackle one of its biggest shortcomings.

    What I'd suggest is to take a look at one of the growing number of 
Debian clones.  Libranet, Mephis, etc. all have strong points; but what's 
slick about them is that anytime you want you can just change your 
/etc/apt/sources.list and, POOF!, after an update you can be running a full 
Debian with easy access to >10K packages.

-- 
  Regards, | Why do geeks get Halloween and Christmas confused?
  .
  Randy    | Because 31 oct = 25 dec.