is debian for me?
 

ohk guys, here is the thing, i started on debian back in 2001... i did it from scratch and being that i knew nothing about linux/unix at the time, i though it was hell so i bought redhat 7.3 in 2002. so with that said, i began to become familiar with linux in general and began to be spoiled by the rpms and the tremendous redhat support. i have tried redhat 9 (was solid but i hated the interface, everything looked the same and things graphically crashed alot), and fedora core....i hate fedora and it hates my pc. so i would have to say that i favor 7.3 the most and i recently went back to that 4 months ago. well i am tired of patching it up so i reinstalled 9 (today) over 7.3 and now 9 has problems. so my question:
sincei have been using redhat so long, will it affect my adapting to debian. debian was solid when i first started, but it was alil too much for me.i hear deb packages are pretty similar to rpms and i really need a free solid distro as redhat stopped supporting....red hat!
also do i have to download the newest install. i have the old disk that i use to install it back then, but most of the install required the internet, so will debian just find the newest packages online or do i need the actuall new install disk?
sorry if i make no sense or ne thing nbut i think i am ready for a harder linux that doesn't sacrifice i's usability to win over win users with its good looks. plus i hear that the most stable versions of linux are Debian,Gentoo, and Slackware. which do you guys prefer and sorry if this really isn't meant for the debian forvm,!
antonius

I think Debian sounds right for you, but I wouldn't recommend it to a Newbie as you already found out. Debian has the advantage of not needing 'upgrades' when the manufacturer feels like putting them out...you can upgrade some or all the packages whenever you feel like it and you don't have to go to the trouble of downloading or buying a new CD to overwrite your existing install. Me, I've used the unstable repository (for the newest software since stable is two years old) and upgraded everything daily for the last six months and it's given me less problems than Red Hat ever did. If you're installing, the Very Verbose Debian Walkthrough is a good source: http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=2016 . One note to the walkthrough though: if you're installing debian testing or unstable, add those entries (testing or *testing and unstable*) to /etc/apt/sources.list before you download everything off the net and save yourself a few hours.

hey man, Debian should be just right for you. i switched about 6 months ago, and i have been much more satisfied than with redhat/mandrake. let me tell you, with the new debian-installer (http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer), it is much much much easier to get started (like sound/network/gui all working with no config after install) in a workable system. it does ask you a lot of questions during install that a fedora install wouldn't ask you, but if you read thru the descriptions of what it wants you to do, you should be ok. debian-installer installs Debian Sarge (the testing version of the os) by default. i suggest sticking with sarge as installing the stable version, woody, is a pain, and i've had bad luck with breaking packages when i tried the unstable version, sid.

in terms of using debian after installation, i guess that some of the config files are in different locations. this help site usually has a good description of where you can find various configs on redhat vs. debian http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz . that site also has more info than you would ever need in terms of general gnu/linux configuration. oh, also, don't expect a lot of gui system config programs. pretty much everything needs to be done via the command line. not to worry though, this forum is always very helpful if you have a question.

in terms of installing software, debian just rules. they have a system in place that automatically compiles packages of about 13,000 programs for all supported platforms and os releases (that must have been incredible to develop). so basically, you have access to just about any gnu/linux software via a simple command

apt-get install <package>

if you don't know the name of the package, but you know what it is about, then you do

apt-cache search <search terms>

and it will present a list of packages that could match your terms. nice. never again do you need to search to make sure u are downloading the right package for your platform and os version. apt does it all for you. and if the package you want has dependencies, apt will go out and install those first. very slick.

the only issue here is that it is sometimes more difficult to install proprietary software (depending on the vendors support for debian packaging). sometimes you have to use alien to convert rpm packages to debian packages. sometimes it's just easiest to extract the directory tree in cases such as installation of java (although there are some apt sources for java packages...i haven't tried that...i'm in the mode where i only want to trust the packages on true debian mirrors...it just gives me a little bit better sense of peace).

i don't think debian will do dvd playback, but i don't have a dvd drive, so i'm not sure about that...but mp3 support is included (as opposed to fedora).

so, to answer your question...finally....yes, switch to debian, it is good for you.

edit:
oh yeah, and

apt-get update

updates the package list with the packages on the mirror that you are using and

apt-get dist-upgrade

upgrades all of the packages on your system to the latest version available. set up a cron job to do this every night and you're good to go knowing that you have the very latest software and security updates every morning when you wake up.

I used Red Hat for about 5 years. Swithed to Debian just a few months ago. Love it. :)

yeah, this is what i wanted to hear!
 

true feedback, i love you guys now!!! yeah apt is a cool little prog and i owe all of the developers my first born child. i used it on redhat annd it did fine for 7.3 but it killed 9 and yum wasn't much luck either. so i guess i will make the switch now, but i have another/some question(s).
umm as far as the ati driver, will it work with debian if i convert from .rpm to .deb or shoulf i just tar it and then install?
also i have a c-media 9738 pci (integrated sis) card, and even though it is ac97 compatable, redhat would use an intel driver for it that worked when doing sound configuration, but it never worked in progs besides xmms. i dled the source from the cmedia website and they say that it has only been tested on red hat. this driver saved my life and works better than the native linux drivers....will it work with deb?
other than that, i can live with debian and i am dling the install as we speak.
thanks, Anthony.

I can't see any reason why the cmedia driver wouldn't work as it's mostly dependent on the kernel. So if you want to use it, you'd better stick to kernel 2.4. I had the same chipset one one PC but elected to continue using my compiled 2.6 since it had better support for some of my other hardware.

!!!!thanx!!!
 

ohk thanks for the info and also thanks for the walk thru....it is pretty much the rh7.3 installer except that it isn't point and click. Debian runs faster than rh does on my comp. maybe because i did a clean/minimal install!!?

http://xoomer.virgilio.it/flavio.sta...installer.html

follow the instructions there to install the ati proprietary driver on debian.