eWeek has reviewed Debian 5.0, and concludes: “Version 5 of the Debian GNU/Linux open-source operating system offers the same top management tools and processor support that previous versions of the Linux operating system have. There also are a host of updates to open-source components, and the Linux distribution is still a great fit for servers and a solid desktop choice. However, the top reason for upgrading from version 4 may be the relatively short three-year security fix window, less than the coverage time offered with Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux-derived CentOS.”
For me Debian is the top distro, bar none. It offers you stability, huge choice, great tools…
I only regret the rebranding of Firefox and Thunderbird and the total disappearance of Seamonkey.
Sometimes I would like a bit more up to date packages, but usually maybe one per machine so it aint that bad.
Debian does everything I need from an OS and more.
Maybe Debian really is the universal operating systen. 🙂
Let me just add, what I need is usually in backports and easily added.
The 5.0 version truly is amazing!
I installed it, and everything just worked. No tweaking whatsoever.
I am using a GigaByte main board with an AMD Athlon, an ATI Radeon HD3200 on board graphics chip, an SATA hard disk and an external USB DVD drive.
Installed without a glitch, ran without a glitch.
Only remaining issue: 3D Graphics support. You don’t yet get that with the free drivers, and the commercial drivers are a PITA.
Give it another 2 years, and we will see Debian deliver the last remaining corner stone as well.
One last (rather cosmetic) thing with the installer remains: At installation, there is no easy selection between KDE, GNOME, XFCE, … as main desktop environment. Only “Desktop”, and then you get GNOME without further question.
I think, I will add this as a feature request for the next release.
I used DVD 1, advanced options,and it gave me a choice between GNOME (default), KDE, Xfce, LXDE.
Lots of people use the netinstall.
One can also use the alternative 1st CDs: http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-builds/i386/iso-cd/
Currently there are an option with KDE and other with XFCE and/or LXDE as desktop environment. That’s what I use in the rare occasions that I have to install Debian on any of my machines (I’ve been dist-upgrading for a few years now).
And if you’re feeling like it, you can always dist-upgrade to Sid, enable the Experimental repositories and then install KDE 4.2. I’m doing it on my laptop and loving every minute of it! Despite the name, Sid tends to behave a lot better than most ‘stable’ releases of some other distributions out there. And you can always use apt-preferences, apt-pinning and apt-listbugs to tame it when you have to.
But I agree that they could communicate this fact a bit better on their homepage, though. It’s overwhelming (and disappointing) the number of Debian reviews that I’ve read in the last couple of weeks saying that you have to settle with GNOME when you choose the Desktop profile…
The funny thing is (I think) the average Debian dev. is hardly aware of how easy Debian has become to install for even unexperienced users.
They’d probably think, what’s the big deal, just to a basic install and later on aptitude install xorg, a window manager etc. later on.
Sure. 😉
I do use Gnome anyway, if I want a smaller footprint I prefer Openbox. 🙂
It involved a degree of tweaking for me (I installed kde). This is in comparison to Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10:
1. I had to unbreak the fonts (they looked pretty bad). Involved at least fontconfig and qt4 settings app, probably some other stuff I don’t remember
2. Had to download install firefox (see #1,fonts on iceweasel looked horrible).
3. Had to install nvidia drivers. Yeah, Ubuntu 8.04 had the same problem – huge fonts in gdm.
4. Had to add myself to sudoers manually.
Agreed. At least it should have warned that it’s a gnome desktop. I installed Lenny because I wanted a conservative KDE distro, and had to install kde after-the-fact. Maybe some of the breakage was because of this.
I would still recommend Ubuntu 8.04 over Lenny for people with very little time for tweaking – for easy googleability of problems & solutions if nothing else. If you feel like taking a break from Ubuntu, Lenny is a good choice; it’s pretty much the same thing, but not so much that it would get boring ;-).
I think you should have gone straight to Mepis Linux! It has most if not all of the tweaks you had to do manually while still residing on the solid Debian Lenny Base and offering a fairly conservative (beautiful) KDE desktop. Mepis also has a lot of its own little applets that make mundane tasks idiot proof. You could have saved yourself a lot of time and trouble had you gone this route. 🙂
Seconded. I recently installed SimplyMEPIS 8.0 on my T61 after a daily update of openSUSE 11.1 killed my video drivers, and it has been a godsend. All of my devices were correctly configured (including suspend to RAM), and the speed increase of using a Debian based system has been phenominal. Little things like Flash and video codecs were installed out of the box, and wireless on my Intel 4965 actually works without a kernel panic, unlike Lenny. MEPIS is to Debian what PC-BSD is to FreeBSD or Mint is to Ubuntu. Correctly configured right out of the box, no worries. Highly recommended to anyone looking for a fast, stable KDE 3.5 desktop.
I’ve got plenty of help with Zenwalk (a Slackware derivative) by simply adding “ubuntu” to my Google searches. There’s quite a bit that applies to all Linux distros, and is not Ubuntu-specific. Then again, some things (ie. how to install proprietary and patent-restricted software) may vary between distros. I’ve also noticed several things that are different not completely based on distro, but by whether GDM is set up to run (Ubuntu) or not (Debian, Slackware); this especially affects X.org drivers like, in my case, the proprietary nVidia ones.
who doesn’t worship Debian?
It’s not about worshiping, it’s about recognizing qualities. And it has quite a number of those.