debian explain
 

hi!!!!,

I when going through this site found many times about debian

shall any body explin me about this

debian is another flavor of linux, such as you have redhat, fedora, suse, mandrake, slackware, yellowdog...while they all work off the linux kernal, each distribution has it's own personality, sort of. check out the linux distribution forum here at LQ and you'll learn way more than you probably ever wanted to know about all of them.

It depends on what you want explained about debian.

The most basic, is that most distro's are based on one of 2 different package managing systems.

RPM which refers to "Redhat package manager" and apt which is the package manager for debian distro and debian based distro's.

In my opinion, the debian system is better, that's because the major RPM based distro's have tailored the RPM system to their own way of thinking. This means that say for mandrake, you'd need mandrake specific rpm's to have the easiest time installing rpm software packages. You could use general rpm packages, but you'd often end up in what's known as "RPM dependency hell". Where you have to install all the dependent packages first. And dependent packages, can have their own dependent packages, etc etc hence "rpm dependency hell".

The debian system, you'd open a terminal, and then if you know what software package you want (and what it's called of course), then you'd issue the command apt-get install whatever which would normally install the whatever package and any dependencies. It's not perfect, but you have much less problems with it.

But there lays, the problem. Proper debian (just google for debian) is available for most different system architectures, as "stable", "unstable" and "testing". It's not as dramatic as it sounds. Though if you wanted the most rock solid system, you'd go for stable, but lot's of the packages are quite old - debian seem to take a long time to move software packages from unstable, to stable. Lot's of people go for unstable. then at least the packages are very much more up to date. But newer stuff always appears in testing first, then it moves down the chain to unstable etc etc.

It can be very complicated to install, as lots of the configuration has to be done manually. Not really for novices and those who are new to linux systems.

There is an easy way. You just download and burn a disc from knoppix. It's debian based, and uses kde for the window manager. It will run from the cdrom drive. You can also install it to the hard drive. If it detected your hardware properly when running from the cdrom, then it is usally OK to install it to the hard drive and you then just manage it like a "proper" debian system. A debian system, without the difficulties of installing "the debian way".It's quite popular, because it's like having a linux distro in your pocket. Plus there's loads of assistance at the knoppix forum's.

hope this helps.

regards

John