Debian flamewar (was: OpenOffice doc...)

[Derek Martin]

On Thu, Feb 17, 2005 at 07:13:32AM -0500, Neil Joseph Schelly wrote:
> > My shiny new (hypothetical) server hardware is only supported by the
> > 2.6 kernel...  What do I do?
> 
> You're just being silly now.  

No, I'm not.  If my server has a new mass storage controller that
isn't recognized by the 2.4 kernel, but is recognized by the 2.6
controller, then debian stable won't install on it, but other more
curent distros will.  I'm not saying that such hardware exists right
now, today, but it could, or it could tomorrow, and this kind of
situation has existed in the past.  Debian potato was impossible to
install for a time on some hardware that wasn't recognized by the 2.2
kernel.  The same will be true of sarge at some point, if it isn't
already.

> > Historically, IIRC, just downloading an ISO was not easy to do.
> > If it is now, that's a welcome change.  But I still don't want to
> > spend 4 hours downloading a bunch of software that's 3 years
> > old...
> How was it hard?  You follow the links, visit the mirrors, and download it.  

I believe that's wrong.  In the Bad Old Days, Debian didn't provide
ISO images.  You had to download all the files from the repositories,
download some scripts, and make them yourself.  Perhaps a long-time
debian user here can confirm that this is correct?  I'm talking maybe
1999 or 2000, but my memory's really unclear on this.

> > APT does not and can not do this for you.  At least, not all by
> > itself.  That's why configuration management doesn't depend on
> > the package manager.
> 
> So what then do you use for this?  I can actually already see doing
> this with APT without issue.  But maybe I'm missing something still.  

If you use APT by itself, you can't guarantee that all the systems
will have the same versions, because APT doesn't schedule jobs.  You
need to use cron to schedule updates.  Then, you need to have a local
repository that you must build and maintain from which you can update,
because if you use Internet mirrors for your updates, then you run the
risk that some servers will get updated and others not due to
circumstances outside your control.  You probably can't update all
your 1000 systems at one time, because it will overload your Internet
connection.  Then, since you're doing automatic updates, you need a
process to update onto a test machine, run some automated tests to
make sure that your next update won't blow up your environment in your
face.  And of course, you need a human to set all this up and make
sure it doesn't break...

APT alone can't do all that.  No package management system can...

> That's why I use Debian.  And Ben seems to make much more grounded
> arguments for his stance, for the record.  I have trouble following
> yours and you continually keep jumping back and forth in your
> points.

Bens's arguments and my arguments are the same.  But how would you
know?  You already said you didn't understand what points Ben was
trying to make...

> Essentially, there are three points here:
> 
> Stability: Both Woody/stable and Sarge/testing have stability at this point.  
> Testing doesn't always have stability, I'll admit, but right now, Sarge does.

This point is useless, unless you're only going to administer your
systems righ now.  It doesn't work that way in real life.  And how can
you guarantee me that the next updates to sarge won't break it?
Regardless of what you say about testing being stable, my experience
prevents me from trusting it in production.

> Reliability: Both Woody/stable and Sarge/testing have reliability.  They 
> aren't going to be seeing any significant changes, software versions, 
> revisions from here on out.  Upgrades are safe with Sarge and very safe with 
> Woody.

And I've already said a dozen times or so that I consider Woody too
old to use for most purposes, when you consider that all of the other
major distros' stable releases  have much newer, better performing,
security enhanced, more featureful software.

Will Woody:

  install on my new hardware which requires a 2.6 kernel?
  support NFSv4?
  support mapping UIDs on NFS?
  support selinux out of the box?
  configure my X display properly on well-supported hardware?
  support running a PDC and BDC using samba (requires Samba 3.0)?
  support my neat web app that needs Apache 2.0?

The answer to all of these is no, or in the case of X maybe.  Yes, you
can upgrade and upgrade and upgrade until it does, but that totally
defeats the point of using a distro, IMO.  

> Cutting edge stuff: Woody is outdated and I've already accepted that.  For 
> servers, this generally isn't an issue,

It's only not an issue if you're willing to settle for sotware that
isn't as powerful as you could be using.  And sometimes, even then, it
can be an issue.  The bottom line is Debian's cycle is just too damn
slow to be useful in production.  That doesn't make it bad, it just
makes other distros better choices IMO. 

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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