Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

November 5, 2003

This article was contributed by Ladislav Bodnar

Are you thinking about removing Red Hat Linux from your servers and replacing it with something else? If so, you are not the only one. There seems to be an increase of current and ex-Red Hat users making discreet inquiries on the Debian and SUSE mailing lists, forum posts with less than flattering opinions about the recent changes at Red Hat, and even full articles explaining reasons behind contemplating such moves (see "Is There a Place for Debian in the Enterprise?" by NewsFactor and "Should I switch from Red Hat to Debian?" by Screaming-Penguin). Even the most devoted Red Hat users are unlikely to be immune to headlines such as "BREAKING NEWS: Red Hat To Drop Linux" by the usually calmer LinuxWorld.com. While things are rarely as bad as some sensationalist journalists make them look, it does help to analyze the complaints and list all the pros and cons before making that final decision.

The main reason for users' dissatisfaction is simple - Red Hat wants us to pay for its products. As businesses go, this is not particularly unusual position to take - except that the world of Linux has created different expectations. Since version 1.0 (released in 1995) until version 7.3 (May 2002), Red Hat Linux was not only completely free for all, the company even provided errata, security and bug fixes for years after release. Updating a running server with the latest security patches required as little as registering for a free account and running up2date every time a Red Hat security advisory showed up in your inbox. For many system administrators life couldn't be any more pleasant!

But about a year ago, things started to change. As Red Hat increased the sales pitch for their enterprise class products while at the same time limiting the life-span of the free edition to 12 months and making it harder for non-paying customers to take advantage of the up2date service, many system administrators in small and medium-size businesses began voicing their concerns. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) products, priced from $180 to $2,500 per system are excellent choices for large enterprises with matching IT budgets, but what about the rest of us?

Let's look at some of the often cited concerns of those who are considering a move away from Red Hat:

Fear of change. Fedora is a major change, an evolution of the much trusted original Red Hat Linux. Any change of this magnitude is bound to create uncertainty and confusion.
Value for money. This is probably the most often raised concern: why pay for RHEL? While most users are not opposed to rewarding Red Hat financially for all their great work, many find RHEL overpriced for their needs. Do I really need an $180 product to run a web, mail and file server?
Fedora life span. Red Hat has made it clear that Fedora will have a fast development cycle and a short life span. It will be up to the community to continue supporting past Fedora releases with errata and security fixes.
Fedora quality control. Indications are that Red Hat developers will spend fewer man hours on future Fedora releases than they used to on Red Hat Linux. Yes, the most critical features will still be developed by Red Hat, but some of the more mundane tasks will probably be handed over to the community. This is not to say that the Fedora community is not up to the task. But the new development model does create an aura of unaccountability - after all, it is "only" Fedora, not the "true" Red Hat (Enterprise) Linux.

Most of those who find the above concerns too serious to keep deploying Red Hat/Fedora on their servers will most likely be investigating offerings by SUSE or Debian. We'll leave SUSE out until we know what Novell's plans are with the German distribution maker and take a look at some pros and cons of migrating to Debian.

First, the advantages:

Freedom. Debian is a non-commercial entity, so you won't find any restrictions on Debian downloads and usage. There are no forms to fill in just to get the latest security updates, and no newsletters promoting certification courses or offering specials on professional products and services. The security updates are available to all without restrictions and without having to wait until paying customers disconnect from the servers providing the update service.
Stability. Debian's release cycle, at an average of about one stable release every two years, is slow by any standard. Yet, this conservative approach means that the releases are extremely well-tested and comparatively bug-free.
Popularity. According to this report by Netcraft, "Debian is the second most popular Linux distribution we find on Internet web sites, surpassed only by Red Hat, and leaving the likes of SUSE and Mandrake in its wake".
Documentation and software. Debian has comprehensive, multi-lingual documentation, plenty of software and unmatched package installation and upgrade infrastructure.

Now for some warnings:

Installation and configuration. A lot has been said about the archaic Debian installer, although the truth is that a skilled system administrator has little to fear. Still, if you are used to Anaconda, the new reality will not be pleasant. (This is about to change in the upcoming Debian Sarge release, which will have a new installer - still text-based, but with many new options, as well as hardware auto-detection.) System configuration is done either by editing text files or by following text-mode apt-config wizards.
Printed manuals and books. While books on Red Hat are a dime a dozen in every bookstore, the publishing houses tend to stay away from books about Debian (or indeed about any other distribution). Books on Debian do exist, however, if you look for them.
Mailing lists. The Debian mailing lists, especially the developer ones, tend to get rough from time to time. Try not to take offense when somebody expresses their disagreement too bluntly.
Learning curve. Those of you who have invested time and money into Red Hat certification programs will have to forget the Red Hat-specific parts of the program and learn how to do things the Debian way. Of course, most of the gained knowledge is general enough to apply to any distribution.

Switching a large number of servers to a new Linux distribution is rarely a stress-free process. But if you feel that your current distribution no longer fulfills your needs, it is good to know that there are other choices. And that's what Linux is about.

Index entries for this article
GuestArticles	Bodnar, Ladislav

apt-get

Posted Nov 6, 2003 1:03 UTC (Thu) by zooko (guest, #2589) [Link] (4 responses)

You left out apt-get. apt-get is the most valuable system administration tool I've ever used. Of course, it isn't just the tool, but also the whole Debian process which provides a very large number of well-maintained packages with proper interpackage dependencies.

I expect to read lots of comments from people in the next few months saying "Hi! I installed Debian last week and OH MY GOD HOW HAVE I SURVIVED THIS LONG WITHOUT apt-get!".

(I never used Red Hat > 7.3, so maybe Red Hat recently grew some apt-get-like functionality of which I am unaware.)

apt-get

Posted Nov 6, 2003 2:00 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] (1 responses)

apt-get is available for Red Hat.

apt-get

Posted Nov 6, 2003 5:51 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

yes, but rh+apt-get is still crappy compared to debian.

I think this is down to people attributing all of debians package installation nice-ness to apt-get, but in fact it's the package maintainers that deserve the credit.

Debian has every conceivable package in it's repositry, so you don't have to install third party packages, so your favourite packages work together and don't conflict.

apt-get

Posted Nov 6, 2003 2:40 UTC (Thu) by ladislav (guest, #247) [Link] (1 responses)

I did list "unmatched package installation and upgrade infrastructure" as one of the advantages. As any Debian developer will tell you, it is not just apt-get - after all apt-get has now been ported to RPM-based distributions too. It is the Debian's strictly enforced packaging policy that makes all the difference.

debconf

Posted Nov 6, 2003 16:15 UTC (Thu) by hazelsct (guest, #3659) [Link]

Absolutely! And apt-get is not where it ends. Debconf, which can be thought of as "configuration wizards done right", exists only in Debian, and makes maintenance and upgrading of config files and other options for many packages totally pain-free. It is one of many Debian advantages.

config4gnu (mentioned at the link above) is trying to do this for many distros/OSes, but has been stalled at an early and unreleasable stage for many months...

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 1:06 UTC (Thu) by torsten (guest, #4137) [Link] (1 responses)

"Switching a large number of servers to a new Linux distribution is rarely a stress-free process."

Are there tools to manage multiple servers at once - updating/maintaining each OS and separate configuration files or different services? How about parallel installs, etc?

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 7:46 UTC (Thu) by ngiger@mus.ch (subscriber, #4013) [Link]

Look at the Fully Automatic Installer (FAI), a Debian package at
http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/.

For administration I use cfengine version 2 (http://www.cfengine.org/) which is a good tool to keep all your servers (or SOHO machines) in a good shape.

Both tools (or their intended useage) require a good deal of planning
and good understanding of how they work to get good results.

Fedora pre-redhat

Posted Nov 6, 2003 3:02 UTC (Thu) by simon_kitching (guest, #4874) [Link] (1 responses)

Fedora existed before RedHat decided to merge "RedHat Linux" into the Fedora project. Fedora was a community which released rpms for RedHat Linux distributions.

So presumably the same people, already skilled in building updated rpms for RedHat systems will continue to be involved in the new Fedora.

Does anyone know what kind of ability/reputation the pre-redhat Fedora community had? If it can be shown that they regularly put out reliable and timely security patches for packages, that would do a lot to persuade people to move to Fedora rather than jump ship to another distribution. It certainly would make me more comfortable about those RH8 systems I just installed for a customer...

Fedora pre-redhat

Posted Nov 6, 2003 8:37 UTC (Thu) by snitm (guest, #4031) [Link]

The pre-redhat Fedora (Fedora.us) was started by a graduate student (Warren Togami) doing a school project to prove the strength of open-source software development. His work was essentially focused on being a HOW-TO organize a successful open-source project with a highly motivated grass-roots community. I'd say Warren likely got an A++.

Before fedora.us there were sites (which are still very active) like freshrpms.net and others that focused on creating high-quality add-on rpms for Redhat Linux. Many of the maintainers/developers responsible for these sites joined Fedora.us and that's how things _really_ took off. Other talented RedHat experts joined on too (e.g. Seth Vidal who develops YUM, a tool similar to APT). To make a long story short, Warren got the attention of the best and brightest non-RedHat Inc RedHat hackers.

Throughout the process Warren's primary focus has been establishing processes for organizing the Fedora.us effort. That is automated build-policies, web-of-trust among developers, QA policies, Bug tracking system, etc.

Fedora.us was making a real attempt at getting all their packages QA'd but in general Warren had a hard time at getting others to really chip away at the growing piles of packages needing QA. They started picking up steam (and continue to do so) and then RedHat developers gradually started to find their way onto the Fedora.us mailing-lists. I could easily see RedHat Inc employees getting increasingly interested in Fedora; and the rest is history.

So maybe that doesn't _really_ answer your question regarding package quality... suffice it to say the people involved in the new post-RedHat Fedora project have proven they can produce quality rpms given enough time and motivation. Not to mention there are quite a lot of Red Hat engineers that are really motivated to get Fedora off the ground; as is evidenced from yesterday's Fedora Core 1 release.

For people who are RedHat certified and all that; but that don't have the money to pony up for RHEL I'd recommend they get involved in Fedora. Making the jump to Debian is not for the average redhat-friendly developer; let alone your average RedHat user.

That said, Debian kicks ass, I use it exclusively for home use and devlop code on it daily at work... wouldn't have it any other way.. BUT its not for everyone; hopefully that'll change in the near future ;)

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 4:58 UTC (Thu) by jachim (guest, #2963) [Link] (1 responses)

Since I support a few servers in my spare time, I'm putting some thought into this issue lately. One of the servers is completely in my hands, and one only to make sure some websites run correctly. I honestly don't see the latter system moving anywhere fast, since the owner just put RH9 on it....

However, the other server can move in whatever direction I desire as long as the essential services keep working. I've thought about Debian, but I'm also giving serious consideration to Gentoo. I've been using it on several personal systems (now I just need to get the wife to use it...), and I'm very happy with it. Portage provides apt-like functionality as I understand it. I could even bootstrap a system on another partition and have it ready to switch over with probably only a couple hours of downtime.

The article's right, though. I can't justify spending the money on RHEL just to run a firewall and file and print server.

Ah well, time to try out Debian again, since it's been about 3 years.....

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 15:34 UTC (Thu) by jeremiah (subscriber, #1221) [Link]

If you can't justify the money, then use Fedora. It's everything we liked about RHL except the name. It's like the difference between OpenOffice and StarOffice. up2date will work for free now, plus you'll get enhancements not just fixes. It is mostly maintained by Redhat. It is RHL, I belive the only reason that they changed the name was due to copyright issues, otherwise that would have stayed the same as well. It's just more open and moves faster 3 versions a year in place of 2. All of the security patches that affect the enterprise version will alos be available to the the fedora version. It seems they will all come from the same place, Just like OOo vs. SO.

I think the only mistake that Redhat has made is in chnaging the name and there by confusing people.

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 5:09 UTC (Thu) by mab (guest, #314) [Link]

Some other warnings:
Enterprise level backup software eg legato, veritas
Attaching to a SAN with dual path HBAs
looking though the support matrix for our SAN and backup software we have two choices Redhat or SUSE
When or if other distros are supported then maybe we would change

Redhat now costs us more than the windows boxes, All we need is access to RHN updates not 9-5 support we have never called/emailed redhat for support.
If redhat had another license eg boxed set and year subcription to RHN but no
other support for half the cost we would galdly stay with them.

Anaconda is coming

Posted Nov 6, 2003 8:30 UTC (Thu) by steveha (guest, #3876) [Link]

The folks at Progeny have adapted the Red Hat installer, Anaconda, for Debian. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

steveha

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 9:32 UTC (Thu) by macc (guest, #510) [Link]

Is there any good comparison
of differences in handling between
Debian <> SuSE <> RedHat ?

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 9:59 UTC (Thu) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link] (9 responses)

One of the most funny things is that whenever the discussion arrives the Debian
advocates can only think of apt-get as the reason to switch.

People, where have you been? On the moon?

First all apt-get is no longer Debian specific. It can be used with a lot of distributions. But
more importantly, the other distributions have been catching up. Consider urpmi. I like it
more than apt.

Which leaves me with the question, why wouldn't Red Hat users switch to Mandrake? It
feels a lot like Red Hat, distributions are supported for 18 months, which is an
improvement over Red Hat, has tools like urpmi, and is generally a good distribution.
Against Mandrake is the image that it is a desktop distribution, however, as server it's
just as good.

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 11:02 UTC (Thu) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link] (7 responses)

I thought about trying Mandrake. But no way:

- I cannot install it on my router/printserver (486) - no problem
with Debian.

- Many packages that are important to me are not available for
Mandrake. Yes, there are 3rd party RPMs, but if I have problems,
I cannot report them to Mandrake, because it's 3rd party. No
problem with Debian, because everything's there.

- I was not able to find Mandrake for the arm or for the alpha
platform. Mandrake seems not to care about non-i586 platforms.
No problem with Debian.

The very good integration of all packages, the strict packaging
policy, the freedom of choosing different hardware, the freedom of
using a lot of packages, that are really part of the distribution,
and tools like debconf all give good reasons to choose Debian.
It's not only apt-get!

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 15:33 UTC (Thu) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link] (5 responses)

> I thought about trying Mandrake. But no way:
> - I cannot install it on my router/printserver (486) - no problem with Debian.

Small computers are the future of the world :) Installing Mandrake on a 486 is very hard
indeed. Realistically speaking though, Linux has become too bulky for a 486. Not that it's
not possible.

> - Many packages that are important to me are not available for
> Mandrake. Yes, there are 3rd party RPMs, but if I have problems,
> I cannot report them to Mandrake, because it's 3rd party. No
> problem with Debian, because everything's there.

No you report them to the Mandrake community. Mandrake (just like Debian) is
community oriented. You cannot report it to the *company* Mandrake, but there is no
company called Debian either.

While this comment does not make sense from the eyes of the Debian user, for a Red
Hat user, your arguments make sense and advise both against Mandrake and Debian.

>- I was not able to find Mandrake for the arm or for the alpha
> platform. Mandrake seems not to care about non-i586 platforms.
> No problem with Debian.

Still on the moon, I see. Come back to earth and visit:

ftp://ftp.club-internet.fr/pub/linux/Mandrake-devel/cooker

It's installed on my Alpha!

> The very good integration of all packages, the strict packaging
> policy,

This is indeed wel done on Debian.

> the freedom of choosing different hardware

??? Sorry, no offense, but Debian is the distribition that is most behind on the hardware
front.

> , the freedom of
> using a lot of packages, that are really part of the distribution,

> and tools like debconf all give good reasons to choose Debian.

Primitive...

> It's not only apt-get!

Good, that was the point. Actually, I'm not so much a Mandrake user, I install SuSE on
most systems. I also maintain a Debian system. And my little Alpha runs Mandrake.

But for Red Hat users, Mandrake looks a good possibility to me.

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 16:02 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] (4 responses)

> ??? Sorry, no offense, but Debian is the distribition that is most
behind on the hardware front.

Eh? Most distributions, Red Hat included, are single-architecture (x86).
Debian runs on at least half a dozen architectures.... sparc, PPC, ARM,
alpha, m86k (ugh)....

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 16:23 UTC (Thu) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

A couple more:

ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/unstable/main/

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 17:04 UTC (Thu) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link] (2 responses)

Try to get 3d hardware acceleration out of a Radeon 8500 on Debian stable. The card is
on the market for years now. I know someone who tried it very hard and went as far as
manually compiling XFree86 4.3 and in the end switched to SuSE to make it work, out of
the box without any configuration effort at all. That is what I meant and it's not just video
cards. Another big issue is that to be able to anything serious with hardware at all you
have to replace the default 2.2 kernel with a 2.4 one. This is something no other
distribution requires it's users do to.

Again, no offense. Debian has strong points, but these are critical issues Debian needs
to solve.

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 20:04 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

I'm using a separate repository to get XFree86 4.3. There are several independent Debian repositories on http://apt-get.org/

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 7, 2003 15:34 UTC (Fri) by lacostej (guest, #2760) [Link]

Debian stable is not meant for the desktop. It's for servers.
you want latest packages, use other backported sources or use testing/unstable.

I run unstable on my desktops/laptops. No problem.

Please do your homework

Posted Nov 6, 2003 16:27 UTC (Thu) by ranger (guest, #6415) [Link]

- I cannot install it on my router/printserver (486) - no problem with Debian.

If your 486 has a maths co-processor, you can install Mandrake on it. If it doesn't, you're wasting your time on a system like that. The time you spend installing anything on it is likely more than you would pay for a decent i586 box.

- Many packages that are important to me are not available for Mandrake. Yes, there are 3rd party RPMs, but if I have problems, I cannot report them to Mandrake, because it's 3rd party. No problem with Debian, because everything's there.

You make it sound like contrib is placed all over the internet like Debian backports are. This is not the case. There are very few packages available on the net that are not in contrib (and thus supported by the community).

Name the packages you need, I am sure they will be in main or contrib. If it's in main or contrib, and there's a problem with it, file a bug.

- I was not able to find Mandrake for the arm or for the alpha platform. Mandrake seems not to care about non-i586 platforms. No problem with Debian.

Mandrake cooker is available for i586, sparc, alpha, ppc and amd64, in addition to the supported releases for ia64, ppc, amd64 and i586 that have been made in the past.

The very good integration of all packages, the strict packaging policy, the freedom of choosing different hardware, the freedom of using a lot of packages, that are really part of the distribution, and tools like debconf all give good reasons to choose Debian. It's not only apt-get!

Please do your homework.

Mandrake packages are pretty decent, and a lot of work is being done on improving them. At present, most of the packages in the distritbution rebuild automatically (in other words all Buildrequires are correct and requirements between the buildrequires are correct) on all platforms that are running cooker.

Packaging policies are similar to Debian (library naming etc), and urpmi now competes with apt-get.

The only thing we don't have is Debconf, but usually configs have sane out-the-box configurations and are well documented. Plus, there is something in the works that will be better than Debconf if it works out as planned.

Please, before you make statements like the ones you did, at least do some research. http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/wiki is a good place to start.

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 10, 2003 12:11 UTC (Mon) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

One of the most funny things is that whenever the discussion arrives the Debian advocates can only think of apt-get as the reason to switch.

Er.... This is a very clear example of selective reading on your part. Indeed, read the very article to which your comment is attached.

Freedom and stability were my two primary reasons for preferring Debian. Freedom in the sense that Debian is dediated to the ideal, and in the sense that I know there is no danger of having to pay in order to be able to use that apt-get convenience. Red Hat may do apt-get, but I don't trust that forever it will be easy to do it without paying for a subscription.

Once Red Hat moved away from having x.2 releases, I knew I couldn't trust it to be stable enough for what I wanted. Debian also has a lot of inertia. Unlike Mandrake, which has had a big question mark in the past as to whether it would continue to exist, Debian has always been community supported, so there is no worry of "what might happen" if the company behinds it goes under or changes it's distribution policies. This is all part of the "stability" argument-- not just the long release cycle and true stability of Debian stable, but the stability of their development and support model. Yeah, maybe not as great support as you might get somewhere else, but support that you can believe will continue in something similar to what it is now, so you'll know what to expect.

-Rob

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 12:51 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] (7 responses)

> Stability. Debian's release cycle, at an average of about one stable
> release every two years, is slow by any standard. Yet, this conservative
> approach means that the releases are extremely well-tested and
> comparatively bug-free.

It's true, but what's good in the stability if it comes at the expense of a serious feature lacking? And being one-two years behind the mainstream releases of most packages means just that: feature lacking. Whenever one needs a newer PHP/Postgres/SpamAssassin/... the answer is either install them manually (and then what's the point of apt-get and all the greatness behind it) or to move to testing/unstable. At this point one usually hears "Well, Debian/testing is as stable as most other 'stable' distros". I agree mostly, BUT:

(from http://www.debian.org/security/faq)

Q: How is security handled for testing and unstable?

A: The short answer is: it's not. Testing and unstable are rapidly moving targets and the security team does not have the resources needed to properly support those. If you want to have a secure (and stable) server you are strongly encouraged to stay with stable. However, the security secretaries will try to fix problems in testing and unstable after they are fixed in the stable release.

Which literally means you'll have to leave with security holes unpatched for an unspecified amount of time - not a pleasant feeling, I'd say. And mixing stable/unstable on the same box is quite a hell of maintenance, given mutually incompatible versions of libc etc (and while running an unstable version of SpamAssassin isn't very risky, an unstable libc probably is).

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 13:47 UTC (Thu) by ladislav (guest, #247) [Link]

the answer is either install them manually (and then what's the point of apt-get and all the greatness behind it) or to move to testing/unstable

There is another option: look for backports to stable. This is one example, (SpamAssassin 2.60 is there) but if your desired package is not listed, you'll be unlucky not to find it with Google. Many of those backports are in fact maintained by the Debian developers themselves.

Of course, this is not an ideal situation either, but if you desperately need a new feature, it will beat the other two options you mentioned.

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 14:09 UTC (Thu) by wookey (guest, #5501) [Link] (3 responses)

You make important points. These are considerations to take into account. There is a fundamental tension between stability (=old) and being up-to-date. Debian at least lets you choose. In practice security updates happen for unstable nearly as fast as they do for stable. They can happen for testing very slowly indeed as they just percolate down from unstable and that can take a while. This is important for those thinking they'll compromise between stable(old) and unstable(new) (and thus pick testing) - testing is a bad idea for a net-facing machine. This could of course be fixed if enough (competent!) people volunteered to be a testing security team - it's just manpower (old-stable, stable, unstable * 11 architectures is already more than enough security work for the team)

There is a genuine problem with running stable server machines but wanting some packages kept fresher (spamassasin is a particularly good example). You can now mix packages from stable,testing and unstable but things can break if you do this. You can also apt-get the source and recompile the packages for stable but that's work and you can still run into problems if it needs newer things to build.

What I do is use the backports apt repositories maintained by some Debian developers to solve exactly this problem. These provide quickly-updated packages for stable in a reasonably consistent form - apt-get.org lists the repositories. This works for me. I'd like to see the process made more official at some point - it probably will be one day.

All these things provide interesting compromises. Debian's entirely open process gives you various ways of managing them, or even collectively improving things.

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 14:51 UTC (Thu) by mduregon (subscriber, #3792) [Link]

thanks wookey,

this posting of yours has cleared some questions I had in my mind about stable/testing/unstable ...

duri

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 21:40 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link]

> There is a fundamental tension between stability (=old) and being up-to-date.

Right, and this tension grows exponentially with the development cycle period. Two years is just too much. Probably it was tolerable a few years ago, but not now, with the fast-growing rate of free software packages (both in number and, as more developers join, feature additions per unit time).

> Debian at least lets you choose.

It lets me choose only between the two limit cases. I want a smoother function ;-)

> In practice security updates happen for unstable nearly as fast as they
> do for stable. They can happen for testing very slowly indeed as they
> just percolate down from unstable and that can take a while. This is
> important for those thinking they'll compromise between stable(old) and
> unstable(new) (and thus pick testing) - testing is a bad idea for a
> net-facing machine.

I realized it, too. But doesn't it defeat the whole idea of "testing" if many potential testers are effectively discouraged from testing (sic!) of server-level networked apps? And which machine is not net-facing nowadays?

> What I do is use the backports apt repositories maintained by some Debian
> developers to solve exactly this problem. These provide quickly-updated
> packages for stable in a reasonably consistent form - apt-get.org lists
> the repositories. This works for me. I'd like to see the process made
> more official at some point - it probably will be one day.

Yes, hopefully.

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 11, 2003 6:38 UTC (Tue) by MLKahnt (guest, #6642) [Link]

I have spoken of this to questions on the Debian-User mailing list, but think of it this way:

Stable: About as current and a bit more frequently updated than MS Windows, but vastly more reliable.

Testing: Usually more current than all but the version shipped in the last week by any other Linux distributions, and while the least secure of the Debian editions, it still puts MS to shame. About equivalent to sitting in a software wholesaler's warehouse, trying everything that comes in.

Unstable: Very current - about equivalent to sitting at the Beta tester's desk for currency of code, but with the polish of software ready to be used by most users. Still more stable than MS Windows.

I've had breakage with Debian when I tried to install Experimental packages for Gnome 2, but they are just that - still being tuned and integrated to install properly and consistently. I've had Red Hat up2date install software that left the DSL code trying to execute the configuration files for network access - leaving the system offline. I've read reports of breakage with not perfect installation scripts in Debian Unstable, but by the time it reaches Testing, all but the most obscure problems are caught.

If security is a concern - a recently discovered worm unveiling an unknown exploit and this being the patch to seal the hole - it is rare for a Testing user to not be able to move to the Unstable edition of the program - only occasionally requiring noticeable updates in the recent string of glibc updates. Debian packaging policy, edition pinning and apt will resolve which packages must be updated, and what must be removed in the process. Alternately, it is always possible to grab the fixed unstable source and build it against Testing as a Debian package, and install that. Sure, on Windows you wouldn't do that, but on Windows, you wouldn't have the fix that quickly.

Debian needs a level between "testing" and "stable"

Posted Nov 6, 2003 19:45 UTC (Thu) by dwheeler (guest, #1216) [Link] (1 responses)

Debian has three levels: "Stable" (aka "obsolete"), "testing" ("needs to be tested"), and "unstable" ("just got the code patches"). Okay, those parenthetical comments are somewhat unfair, but I think they illustrate the problem. Many server users will find "stable" exactly what they want, but for many desktop users, "stable" is far too obsolete, yet "testing" hasn't undergone any significant system testing.

In my mind, Debian needs a level between "stable" and "testing"; let's call it "ready". This "ready" level would take the "testing" version and run the system through a number of regression tests and uses of the system as a whole (say for a more intensive 1-month period before release). This "ready" level would be released every 6-9 months, with patches as necessary.

I'm interested in Debian, but its poor initial installation approach is a problem. But even after I get it installed, it simply doesn't have a level I want. The old Red Hat Linux did do this. I think that the Debian community could do this without fundamentally destroying their community.

Debian needs a level between "testing" and "stable"

Posted Nov 6, 2003 22:25 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link]

> Many server users will find "stable" exactly what they want, but for many
> desktop users, "stable" is far too obsolete

Well, I believe "stable" is far too obsolete also for many server uses - unless the server is supposed to do some very archaic tasks like serving static HTML content or providing SMB services to Win95 clients.

> In my mind, Debian needs a level between "stable" and "testing"; let's call
> it "ready". This "ready" level would take the "testing" version and run the
> system through a number of regression tests and uses of the system as a
> whole (say for a more intensive 1-month period before release). This
> "ready" level would be released every 6-9 months, with patches as necessary.

I don't know. Regression tests are a great thing anyway, but IMHO, it's the security policy (or a lack thereof) that diverges potential testers from "testing".

> I'm interested in Debian, but its poor initial installation approach is a problem.

Hmm. Actually, this is what bothered me the least. Of course, having started with SLS back in 1993, I'm not very picky about graphical installers ;-). In fact, I installed Debian on one of my servers that was running a Slackware distro without disturbing the services, in a chrooted environment. Then rebooted, noticed some sharp edges, rebooted back into slack, fixed the problems (again, in chroot), repeated it once or twice more, and was done. The total downtime was around 15 minutes or so.

> But even after I get it installed, it simply doesn't have a level I want.

Level of what? I personally got used to it quite quickly. Probably, because I met an old friend of mine - apt-get (I used it on RH boxes prior to it -;)).

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 13:57 UTC (Thu) by ll (guest, #4404) [Link]

I'm doing the move from RH right now. A couple of things not mentioned in the article:

-- As someone mentioned, no "big commercial, not-just-for-linux" binary products (Oracle, etc) support Debian. OTOH, one commercial, for-linux binary product, Crossover Office, works fine. I'm sure there are others.

-- Unstable generally has more packages than RH, and there's less hunting around for RPMs. However, there are some gaps - e.g., mozilla-firebird is still at 6.1 in unstable.

-- Knoppix is a great way to jump start your Debian experience, and also has a pretty good installer. Anyone interested in trying out debian should give it a shot.

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 15:02 UTC (Thu) by rsevenic (guest, #10318) [Link]

For a home/small office the debian version I prefer is Libranet - easy to install and use - but not an enterprise-ready solution. When needing RedHat in my consulting work, I use KRUD. However, KRUD is in turmoil about what direction to take in responses to the changes at RedHat.
Richard

Books

Posted Nov 6, 2003 16:05 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

One significant book that's Debian-focused is the Linux Cookbook.

Major or minor change?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 16:42 UTC (Thu) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

From the article:

Fear of change. Fedora is a major change, an evolution of the much trusted original Red Hat Linux.

This is confusing: the term "evolution" is usually used to indicate gradual change, and doesn't really make sense following the phrase "major change" just ahead of it.

So is Fedora Core 1 a major or minor change from Red Hat Linux 9?

Reading the release notes, I'd have to say it's a minor change. There are no significant package deletions other than the LPRng print system, so a sysadmin moving from RH9 to FC1 would not find this to be a difficult upgrade. Despite the changes in the development model, not much has really changed as of yet -- the majority of the work is still done by RH developers. The life span is changed from ~2 releases a year to 2-3 releases a year, which is not that big of a change either. And you can still download the ISO images from the Redhat FTP site. Probably the biggest change is the name and version number.

Having said all that, I should mention that I use Debian. :^) Try it, you'll probably like it once you get past the installation process.

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 20:31 UTC (Thu) by dlau (guest, #4540) [Link] (1 responses)

When testing debian, I missed some things I like about Red Hat:

No /sbin/service or /sbin/chkconfig. How is this handled in Debian?

Consolehelper/userhelper used by the redhat-config-* tools. I really like the way this is handled.

When I have time, I'll play around with it some more.

/sbin/service

Posted Nov 10, 2003 13:56 UTC (Mon) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link]

is invoke-rc.d
i think the other one would be update-rc.d
hope I have helped.

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2003 22:17 UTC (Thu) by borthner (guest, #4277) [Link]

| System configuration is done either by editing text files or by following
| text-mode apt-config wizards.

Or one can always install webmin (well supported in all three levels of debian) and enjoy its excellent GUI for both general systems administration and many popular server packages. We use webmin on debian and it has saved me many hours of configuration hassles.

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Nov 7, 2003 16:56 UTC (Fri) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link]

Just for the record.

Stable is unconditionally stable. It may take 18 months to release new
major versions - but it will have been tested for longer. Security fixes
are backported and point releases made - 2.2 had 7 point releases, the last being a matter of days before 3.0. Mission absolutely critical -
at least as up to date as RH 7.3

Testing is "testing for a release". All the code has spent some time in
unstable. [At the moment, for example KDE 3.x is going into testing, after
being in unstable for months - replacing KDE 2.x which was in the last release.] It's stable enough to work with for days/weeks/months.
As up to date as RH 9.0

Unstable is bleeding edge - but works well and is regularly fixed.
Not for mission critical code but certainly good enough for daily work

HTH,

Andy

[Not speaking for anyone else]

Signed packages?

Posted Nov 7, 2003 21:50 UTC (Fri) by EricBackus (guest, #2816) [Link] (2 responses)

Last time I looked (yes, awhile ago now), one thing that was missing from Debian was signed packages. On RedHat or SuSE, packages are cryptographically signed so I can be confident of their origin. On Debian, that wasn't even possible, I believe due to limitations of the .deb format.

Has that changed? For me, it's a show stopper.

With the proliferation of viruses, trojans, and even attempts at getting security holes into the kernel, it is simply not acceptable to download a package and run it without some assurance that I know who put the package together. I really don't understand how so many people can find this OK.

Signed packages?

Posted Nov 8, 2003 0:03 UTC (Sat) by liamh (guest, #4872) [Link] (1 responses)

Almost all packages are signed, though apparently policy doesn't require it yet. Check with debsums.

Signed packages?

Posted Nov 9, 2003 6:43 UTC (Sun) by EricBackus (guest, #2816) [Link]

> Almost all packages are signed, though apparently
> policy doesn't require it yet. Check with debsums.

OK, good. So I assume that apt-get automatically rejects (or at least *can* reject)
packages that aren't signed by somebody it recognises as legitimate?

desktop downgrade: RH -> debian/testing

Posted Nov 8, 2003 1:50 UTC (Sat) by olivergeorge (guest, #4621) [Link]

Debian seems to be more conservative about providing users with the latest version of upstream packages. I expect that a RedHat user would feel like they were downgrading if they decided to install debian/testing (XFree and Gnome spring to mind). While all things can be installed under debian i think the standard RedHat user would find the extra effort undesirable and be deterred.

- this admission from a content Debian user...

Time to move from Red Hat to Debian?

Posted Dec 29, 2003 17:21 UTC (Mon) by znmeb (guest, #18291) [Link]

I thought exactly the same things ... and I switched to Debian. I'm now
running a Knoppix hard disk install enhanced with math, network and audio
packages from the net on two of my machines, as much of Woody as I could
cram into a 32 MB Toshiba Libretto 70 (KDE sorta works in 32 MB -- Knoppix
doesn't, though) and a more or less vanilla Knoppix hard disk install as a
VMWare guest on my Windows machine. Four PCs, all running some flavor of
Debian.

A little history -- I've been trying for several years to get Red Hat on
the Libretto without much success. It took me a while (and some DOS 5.0
floppies) to get Woody up on the Libretto, but once I figured out how to
get files larger than one floppy into the DOS partition, the rest was
easy.

Now I've got my own Debian mirror on a 20 GB Archos USB hard drive. I
download packages at night, put them on the mirror with "apt-move", then
spread them around to my four Debian installations. I'm making my own
re-mastered Knoppix releases, etc. To sum it all up -- Debian and Knoppix
have made Linux *fun* again!

Ed Borasky
znmeb@borasky-research.net
http://www.borasky-research.net/