A review of OpenSUSE 10.3, which concludes: "While openSUSE's efforts to simplify Linux or Window-fy Linux can be commended, the inconsistency in their implementation is its downfall. Opening applications quickly becomes a chore with the excessive amount of clicks needed to find the application you want. The application browser loads slowly, looks cluttered, and uses icons that are too large. Yast has been improved but still feels slow."
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Member since:2005-07-24
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However, where Debian excels the competition is the quality of packages.
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I call BS on that. That Debian packages are somehow of *higher quality* than those of other distros is another falsehood which has been repeated so many times by Debian fans that it is now accepted uncritically. Believe me. I would not tolerate inferior quality packages from, say, CentOS or RHEL on my customers' servers.
And again, in this post, I see the insinuation that other distros don't check dependencies carefully, and if you use them you will be stuck in rpm hell.
The Debian FUD machine is still going strong, I see.
Member since:2005-07-13
Especially since the other distros, such as openSUSE, Fedora and even *buntu, are moving towards automated build systems. Packages are built properly against dependencies, rebuilt when dependencies change, and propogate patches when applied.
Debian deserves props for tackling dependencies and establishing packaging guidelines way back in the day, but wow, time to let go of that and look at things without rose-colored glasses. A dev can pour source code into the openSUSE build-service and have packages automatically built against not only various versions of openSUSE/SLED, but against various versions of linux, including Fedora, Ubuntu and Debian. With dependency resolution. At this point the build-service can provide openSUSE users with any number of newer and cutting-edge packages, updated automatically, without human intervention (unless warranted by a build error).
Debian may have more overall packages, but I'd be willing to bet that openSUSE has equivalent, if not faster, access to the relevant and most modern, or even bleeding-edge, packages that people are actually using. Heck, the KDE4 build-packages auto-update based on svn on a weekly basis, assuming that the code builds without errors, it doesn't get much more bleeding edge than that.
There's nothing wrong with the way Debian does things, they're very good at it, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're doing it better than anyone else. Technology moves fast, and things change, particularly within the span of a decade.
Member since:2006-05-04
The Debian FUD machine
Isn't that a bit exaggerated?
In any case, I believe "rpm hell", or "dependency hell", is a thing of the past for most distributions.
I'm a longtime Debian user, I've used Gentoo for 3-4 years, and I'm running one Ubuntu install for a month. I did try OpenSuse betas for 10.3. I still prefer Debian because of, first of all, my experience with Debian, but also because of the large amount of packages in the official repos and the -in general- good quality of the software packages. That doesn't mean that I believe the quality of packages in other distros is worse. Well, except for Gentoo: I have the impression that the quality of Gentoo packages got worse over the last couple of years, and that is one of the reasons I stopped using it about a year ago.
I think that what plays a much larger role regarding the quality of a certain package, is the capabilities of the package maintainer, and how much he or she takes his job as a serious responsibility. For any distribution, you'll find package maintainers which are doing an excellent job for their packages, and you'll find sloppy package maintainers. Maybe this isn't only about "quality of existing packages", but also important is the reaction on bug reports, keeping the package uptodate with upstream and so on. But, in general, I believe that most large distros have high quality packages, simply because they have enough developers to maintain their packages.
Member since:2007-03-29
Not FUD, actually. Four to five years ago I switched from SuSE to Debian. (My first distro had been SuSE 6.0). Recently I tried out OpenSuSE again, and, well, I found even many minor upgrades offered by YOU (YaST online update) were uninstallable due to unresolved dependencies.
I have been a Debian Unstable user for half a decade now, and I rarely ever see dependency issues. Most conflicts are resolved by aptitude in an acceptable way and without intervention.
Therfore I was so stunned by the apparent inability of yast to resolve even trivial issues. My attempts to convince YaST to install the latest (security) upgrades, while trying to have mp3 support, ended up in a complete mess. After just a couple of days I re-formatted the SuSE partition.
However, the most annoying part was the installation process which took unbearably long and was extremely uncomfortable. I tried the online install, because I was unwilling to download and burn 4 CD images.
With Debian, you can download a 9 megs minimal iso, boot from it, then you tell the Debian installer where you are located and it selects the nearest Debian mirror for you and there you go.
With SuSE you have to know the exact URL of the repository, which took me a considerable number of attempts to find out. A number of times, errors in the install process resulted in dead ends, and yast left no option than to restart from scratch, where the Debian installer always allows you to go back and repeat any previous step. Therefore installing OpenSuSE took me something in the order of 4 hours, which is, I would say, intolerable.
Part of that is caused by the fact, that I am simply used to Debian, but much of it is also the fault of the deficient installer.
Edited 2007-10-09 11:40
Member since:2006-01-01
I call BS on that. That Debian packages are somehow of *higher quality* than those of other distros is another falsehood which has been repeated so many times by Debian fans that it is now accepted uncritically. Believe me. I would not tolerate inferior quality packages from, say, CentOS or RHEL on my customers' servers.
And again, in this post, I see the insinuation that other distros don't check dependencies carefully, and if you use them you will be stuck in rpm hell.
The Debian FUD machine is still going strong, I see.
I can see we're talking about different things. You're trying to turn this discussion into a .DEB versus .RPM flame war, but that was not the intention of my comment. There are many more distros out there in addition to Debian, openSUSE, CentOS, and RHEL. The current DistroWatch database summary lists 366 active distributions. I have used about two dozens of them and I can tell you that the overall quality of packages (packaging policies, dependency resolving, bug tracking, security updates) can vary a lot from one distro to another.
Please read my comment in that larger context and you'll find that it doesn't contain the BS, insinuations, or FUD that you see there.
Member since:
2006-01-01
Apt is probably the fastest of the package managers. And package availability in the Debian world is probably second to none. With that much going for Apt, it's always seemed odd to me that its fans seem to feel they must resort to spreading disinformation about the competition.
I think at least FreeBSD, Gentoo, and Ubuntu have more packages than Debian (although the difference is slight). However, where Debian excels the competition is the quality of packages. The other distros have "second class" packages while in Debian *all* packages are treated as "first class".
It takes a lot of practice and testing before people are accepted to become Debian package maintainers. Dependencies are carefully checked and there are special Debian tools to check the packaging quality. Reported bugs get fixed. *All* packages receive security updates. These are the reasons why Debian rocks!