Newbie switching from Mandrake to Debian
 

In all honesty, will I encounter many problems switching from Mandrake to Debian? I'm sick and tired of Mandrake not being able to compile software. I'm sick of Mandrake's URPMI feature which never updates any new software.

My friend currently uses Debian and all his applications are all up to date using the apt-get feature.

If you're going to hose your machine anyway, try upgrading your machine to mandrake 10 using the steps I outlined in this post:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=222612 (except where I say to choose 9.0; choose 10 here).

Alternatively, Synaptic comes set up to point to Mandrake Cooker (which is the development environment, similar to Debian unstable), so you could always stay up to date using that.

I went from Mandrake 9.2 to Libranet 2.7->2.8.1/Debian Unstable (via internal upgrade) to Mandrake 10 to Mandrake cooker and finally back to Mandrake 10. Being "cutting edge" is not a great idea for your primary desktop machine. Libranet's a nice distro, but you may miss some of Mandrake's slickness.

I tried the same steps bluefire outlines in his other post to try to upgrade Mandrake 9.1 to 9.2 and it hosed my system. Mandrake is still not designed to be easily upgradeable the way Debian is. Even using an official CD to upgrade can be worse than just wiping and starting a fresh install. After I screwed up Mandrake I went distro-shopping, out of the dozen I tried Libranet was one of them. Eventually I settled on pure Debian. My reasons:

1)If you want Debian, install Debian, not some other Debian-based distro. Some of these may have made progress in the months I've tried them, but they always end up with more problems maintaining the system (with apt-get, etc.) than you save in the setup.

2)The rolling upgrades apt-get makes possible. If you use unstable or testing, apps are upgraded when new versions come out and have been tested enough to make sure they install properly. Mandrake and other commercial distros fall behind pretty quickly between releases, and they sometimes are guilty of rushing in new software for a new release when it is still full of bugs. Even unstable packages rarely fail to upgrade properly.

3)'Cutting edge'--this is your choice. Unstable is cutting edge and occasionally beats other distros in getting new packages out. Testing takes a few months to make absolutely sure something is working right. Stable takes this to extreme levels for absolutely critical things like servers.

4)Debian is highly standardized and so will usually work properly when compiling things, installing 3rd party things, etc.

Debian is not for any but the boldest newbies. You're probably experienced enough with Mandrake/Linux (judging by your posts #) to give it a go. Plus you can always bug your friend for help!

Actually, my post numbers are high because I have asked many questions, yet receive no solutions. I'm just fed up with Mandrake because nothing compiles... EVER! I'm going to skip the method that was described on upgrading Mandrake 9.1 - > 10.0. Sounds dangerous!

My friend uses Debian, as I posted earlier, and his computer just runs smooth and he never has any problems. Therefore, I'm going to give Mandrake 10.1 (when it's final) a chance, and if that doesn't work, then goodbye Mandrake and hello Debian!