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I think you will find RHEL is very different from Debian Sid... all software packages are a few years older, package management is with "yum" instead of "apt," corporate/enterprise vs. free-software-ideologists, expensive vs. free, etc. Perhaps if you could explain your reasoning for the switch, you question would make more sense.
I have managed Redhat for a long time and started looking at Debian again after a long time because we are having more users with Ubuntu.
I think it is great to use multiple distros because you learn more about the fundamentals than just how to use a distro's tools.
So my suggestion is to add Redhat rather than switch, and then throw in some Slackware or Suse
Perhaps not the best suggestion for managing many servers but you learn a lot!
I think you will find RHEL is very different from Debian Sid... all software packages are a few years older, package management is with "yum" instead of "apt," corporate/enterprise vs. free-software-ideologists, expensive vs. free, etc. Perhaps if you could explain your reasoning for the switch, you question would make more sense.
Back in the days when I was in high-school RedHat was pretty popular and until recently I thought was kinda dead, Fedora being born out of it. Mostly because I'm curious how RedHat evolved, and what has changed. For the moment I think Debian it's one of the most complex linux distros out there, basically there's nothing you can't do with Debian but I believe RedHat will bring up old memories. But I still wonder if worths installing it 'cause I've didn't heared much of it lately. I'm interested mostly in the multimedia side of linux, so it's important for me to have access at the latest packages in use.
Back in the days when I was in high-school RedHat was pretty popular and until recently I thought was kinda dead, Fedora being born out of it. Mostly because I'm curious how RedHat evolved, and what has changed. For the moment I think Debian it's one of the most complex linux distros out there, basically there's nothing you can't do with Debian but I believe RedHat will bring up old memories. But I still wonder if worths installing it 'cause I've didn't heared much of it lately.
Then you haven't been following the news much lately. Red Hat gets a ton of good press for growing their business during a lean economy.
However, given the reasons you state for the switch I wonder if you'd be better off saving a few $$ and taking a CentOS Live CD for a test drive. (CentOS is based on the RHEL source code with the Red Hat artwork and branding removed.) This should allow you to make a more informed decision before you pay for a RH subscription.
RHEL will not give you "the latest packages in use" by the way (currently they are at kernel 2.6.18 for example) so if you are switching from Debian Sid you should expect all applications to be at least a couple of years older.
Then you haven't been following the news much lately. Red Hat gets a ton of good press for growing their business during a lean economy.
However, given the reasons you state for the switch I wonder if you'd be better off saving a few $$ and taking a CentOS Live CD for a test drive. (CentOS is based on the RHEL source code with the Red Hat artwork and branding removed.) This should allow you to make a more informed decision before you pay for a RH subscription.
RHEL will not give you "the latest packages in use" by the way (currently they are at kernel 2.6.18 for example) so if you are switching from Debian Sid you should expect all applications to be at least a couple of years older.
So RHEL it's kinda oldish and they expect me to pay for it, that's not good.
Redhat is for stability in a server environment, I would not recommend it for personal desktop/laptop use. It is distributed with a baseline version and then Redhat backports security enhancements to your existing software.
You are paying for a stable supported operating system, you don't have dependency version conflicts as long as you are running software from their repos but you do have the latest security patches. It is designed to be put in a data center and then be supportable for 5-6 years with out a major upgrade. You wont find that in most desktop distros, but you also wont find much multimedia support in a server OS
I am not much of an Ubuntu person, but you might look at Ubuntu Studio, it looks like something along the lines of what you might be looking for.
Redhat (RHEL) is for a server environment, I would not recommend it for your use.
CentOS - same thing
Fedora - Test environment for RHEL
well yeah but I saw on redhat page they have a desktop version available either beside the server version. I've tried Ubuntu in the past but it's kinda buggy and anyway I'm already using debian Sid, installing Ubuntu at this point would feel kinda like a drawback.
If you just want to see how the others do,
- Ubuntu and Fedora, with their six-month release cycles (here I come, ready or not!), are often buggy
- Slackware has a limited amount of software for someone with your interests
- Gentoo takes for ever to set up
but you might like OpenSuse, Mandriva, Dream, Sabayon, or Vector; all rather different.
Thanks guys for all your replies, for the moment I think I'll just stick with Debian I must say there's nothing like apt or aptitude out there. You know sometimes out of curiousity you just wanna try something new even if you feel you have everything you might desire already.
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