Why Debian and NOT Slack?
 

Try to convince me guys, i really have a dilemma! And I need to focus on a BETTER distro, huh :study:

I've been down with Slack for many years now, and so far It's running on all my servers. I also was running debian a few years ago for some time, but I didn't like it, it was to diferent then other distros... Now that Debian is getting better and better, i really don't know on what distro to focus. Maby because Debian has a better pkg tool system for installing/upgrading packages?

I like the new Slack8.1 very much, and i wouldn't be asking you this question if I would have all four CDs, thought. It's nice to have "all" the packages on CDs. I have 1 CD of Slack, and all 7 CDs of Debian 3.0r0.

I have a dilemma, so pls help.

Btw, i like to configure everything by hand, and that makes Slack even more beautiful. All the files on the system are so nice arranged... How is Debian doing when it comes 2 arranging files? Does he have a nice tree structure or it's all messed up like in Suse or RH... :confused:

zeky

My philosophy is this: If it works, then leave it the way it is.
If I was in your situation, then I would just stay with Slack, you have them configured the way you want, they are working, what else could you ask for. Just MHO.

Do u know where I could get the other three CDs of slack, for free? :)

zeky

When you are happy with slack - why go anywhere else.
I need a free case of beer. :D

Word. Btw... fell free to come here for a beer or two... I'm home alone for the whole month so i made myself a monthly supply of beer :p ...oh yes... and bring that 4 Slackware 8.1 CDs, kthx ;)

Nah - wrong time of the year.I probably do my US-tour first.Thanks anyway.

I like Slack because it's mostly manual and I have the power to change anything I want. I won't have to wory about the system changing settings on me. Also, I come from a Unix background and have found it to be the most Unix like. I just upgraded to 8.1 from 8.0 and the improvements are numerous:
- ext3 file systems, much faster bootups
- kde 3, yeah baby!
- printer setup was much easier than 8.0
- eth setup was autodetected for the first time

I'll spend the next couple of days configuring, tweaking and should be happy for quite some time. :)

That´s the cool thing about debian. Whenever you install a package that can change the config, it will ask you if you want to install the config or look it through´or keep the original.

I ´have tried slack and didn´t notice a perfomance increase. Since debain have a couple of setup programs that is really nice i stick to that (although most of my config´s i do by hand).

But´s as stated before: if it run´s smoothly why change...

On a unrelated note:I tried gentoo to see the 'performance increase' when everything gets compiled from source vs. debian.I didn't see anything there speedwise.It seems to me that the whole distro vs. distro discussion when it comes to performance is way overrated.
I did see a difference between Suse and debian but I am sure that Suse would be as fast if you tweak it a bit.

I saw a BIG speed difference between RedHat and Slack. I don't know if there's any speed difference between Slack & Debian though. They both seem pretty fast, even on a K6 450 with 64M RAM.

Oh zeky, you really don't need the other 3. 1 is zipslack, the other is the sources, and the third is a linux rescue/live demo disc.

Ah, allright than :) I thought i was missing something :p

zeky

Well, the 4th CD actually contains some extra packages, but they can be downloaded from the extras/ directory on the FTP mirrors.

I have all 4 that I bought from Slackware, mostly as an excuse to donate some money to them.

You aren't missing much: CD2 is a bootable live file system, but I think Knoppix or Virtual-Linux are better at this sort of thing. CD3 contains most of the sources, CD 4 contain the rest of the sources, and a few (not much) other apps, some old stuff and a bunch of extra kernels if I remember correctly.

So here we have a big difference between Slackware and Debian: Slackware includes a small subset of all the open source software available. Debian includes includes everything open source has available (even if you have to go to the "unstable" branch to get it) unless they have philosophical or legal problems with their licensing.

I am new to Debian, but find it more complicated than Slackware. It has a lot of cryptic Debian-specific command line utilities that you are suppose to use to get things done, but so far I haven't found a good Debian :newbie: doc on how to go about finding or using these things. I also find that Debian comes even less preconfigured than Slackware. But hey, Debian certainly has the superior packaging/upgrading system.

They got something about books for debian on the website.But I only checked out the german one.Thats available as complete download - don't know about the others.