Going from Redhat/Mandrake to Debian is quite a steep jump, Debian isn't anywhere near as easy to set up, although its package management system (apt) is nicer than RPM. Progeny Debian and Storm Linux are more user-friendly versions of Debian. Stormix have gone out of business last I heard, but Progeny is still around. I can make copies of the two Progeny binary CDs if you like, I don't plan on installing it myself for another couple of weeks yet since I need compatibility with the lab machines at uni until the end of the semester (so I'm running Slackware 7.0).
Ewww slackware... evil. ;)
It's actually pretty nice, if you don't plan on upgrading things too often ;-) It's a good way to familiarise yourself with the internals of the OS tho.
I'm personally of the opinion that although apt-get is quite convienient it has potentially large security flaws. Or at least it appears to have. Though I'm not experienced enough with debian to give a definiative statement in that regard. I'm still sticking to RedHat as I've not seen anything in debian to really convince me to jump ship.
Installing binary RPMs isn't that safe either, is it? Unless you plan on installing from source, and studying it in detail, every time you install a program, you have to take a leap of faith regardless of your package management system. The apt system seems pretty well-regulated, not like someone could sneak in a nasty new version of the Gimp that sends all your pictures to the Church of Scientology. ------------ WLUG - The Waikato Linux Users Group WWW: http://wlug.linuxcare.co.nz To unsubscribe, send an email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz with "unsubscribe wlug" in the body of the message.
Installing binary RPMs isn't that safe either, is it? Unless you plan on installing from source, and studying it in detail, every time you install a program, you have to take a leap of faith regardless of your package management system. The apt system seems pretty well-regulated, not like someone could sneak in a nasty new version of the Gimp that sends all your pictures to the Church of Scientology.
http://www.cyantology.com/ ;-) ------------ WLUG - The Waikato Linux Users Group WWW: http://wlug.linuxcare.co.nz To unsubscribe, send an email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz with "unsubscribe wlug" in the body of the message.
Installing binary RPMs isn't that safe either, is it? Unless you plan on installing from source, and studying it in detail, every time you install a program, you have to take a leap of faith regardless of your package management system. The apt system seems pretty well-regulated, not like someone could sneak in a nasty new version of the Gimp that sends all your pictures to the Church of Scientology.
binary RPMs can be signed with PGP keys, and as long as you get them off a mirror you trust, are fairly likely to be OK. problem with apt is, you dont get anywhere near as much control over what you install. you tell it to do one thing, it insists on going and installing about 18 other packages, so you just hit ok, etc... i think what orj is referring to is the possiblity of someone tampering with your sources.list and adding a poisoned source - unless you check it (ever?) you might not notice until its way too late. any of the proxy setups could be poisoned as well. *shrug* apt is, however, much nicer than rpm. until you decide you dont want something installed, at which point its not just a case of force-downgrading it as you would with rpm, but a matter of spending a lot of time coercing apt or dpkg to let you. ------------ WLUG - The Waikato Linux Users Group WWW: http://wlug.linuxcare.co.nz To unsubscribe, send an email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz with "unsubscribe wlug" in the body of the message.
participants (3)
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Chris Martin -
Daniel Lawson -
Raymond Burgess