I have been using UNIX systems since 1982. In order to have the same capability at my home I had been a Minix user on my IBM XT. When Linus posted his now famous message to comp.os.linux I was one of those people that downloaded the 0.11 bits onto my minix system. It was good. Really good. I had been porting GNU software to Minux. Now I started porting GNU and other software to Linux. I have been using Linux actively since 1992.
In the course of events I was convinced by a friend that if Linux was going to survive it would need to be available to the masses and not just to an elite group with the skills to build it themselves. The distribution was going to be key to making Linux successful. Therefore I installed what is now called a "distro". A distro was an odd new fangled thing. Most people at the time installed the system by hand. (Today the legacy of this is the Linux from Scratch and Gentoo projects.) Distributions opened up Linux to the masses and are a huge contributor to its success today.
I originally installed SLS and Slackware on my systems. But I soon moved to using Red Hat since it was one of the bigger names in free software distributions. I was very favorably impressed with the distributions. Compared to downloading all of the source and compiling and installing it all by hand Red Hat was much easier. I could then start fixing the things that were broken on the system and have a good head start to getting a system running. Instead of taking many days I could now have a system installed and configured in only a day or so. Much of the drudgery was removed. I used Red Hat as my major base platform through their 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, 7.x releases.
Unfortunately Red Hat has many bugs and annoyances. It was better then installing software from scratch. But there was still a long list of bugs to be fixed and customization to be applied with every release. Fixing a RH installation was getting to be the same drudgery that previously had tired me out with installing from scratch. Soon I was maintaining my own distillation of Red Hat similar to Mandrake or KRUD. I began to question how much real benefit was I was getting from using Red Hat as a base. And reporting bugs to Red Hat was a frustrating experience. Most bugs were summarily closed with seldom more words than "That was intentional." Also while upgrading within a release generally worked fine I generally found it very difficult to upgrade systems from one major release to another major release. The best plan was to scrape a system clean and reinstall from scratch with every new major release. Trying to upgrade in place usually did not work without a lot of manual effort to fix broken packages.
I had used friend's Mandrake and SuSE systems and saw that a lot of problems were fixed there. But also some of the same problems existed there. It seemed there was no choice but to homebrew your own distribution. It appeared to me that SuSE was the better of the systems. But SuSE is not truly a free software system. They know where there revenue comes from and they protect it.
I was not just a Red Hat system user. I was also a developer. Instead of just hacking a system in place I would normally correct the rpm package and send the fixes upstream. My work platform was HP-UX and I ported rpm to it and used rpm packaging extensively there to maintain contributed software. I created literally hundreds of rpm packages from scratch. I maintain them for a variety of systems including Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE and HP-UX. Portability across systems such as that is a difficult thing and one of the reasons I was forced into it. Almost no one else provided packages which would work across that variety of systems.
Various friends had been praising the virtues of Debian. I decided I would give it a test and see if it had value. I had been reluctant to try it previously. Debian uses .deb format files instead of .rpm format files. This was a barrier to me since I had hundreds of packages which I had "fixed" for Red Hat. Debian represents another major branching in the GNU/Linux family tree. But eventually being frustrated with Red Hat I decided to give Debian a try.
I had a friend help with the installation and mentor me with my early learning about the system. Up through Debian's "woody" release the initial installer was well criticized as being difficult to use. There was no automatic hardware detection. You had to manually list drivers for your installed hardware. As a "homebrew" linux person previously this was relatively easy for me. But I can see why other people were uncomfortable with it. Having a knowledgeable friend help you with the initial installation is a good thing. This was the barrier which had been holding me back from trying Debian previously.
I wish I had not held off trying Debian for so long. I found a very high quality system without most of the annoyances which plagued me using Red Hat. For the traditional UNIX user it was very comfortable and for me felt like wearing my favorite pair of shoes. Here is a rant about Why Choose Debian where I give my reasons that Debian rules! I started using Debian in January of 2001 and only wish I had been using it previously. Debian is a solid free software distribution of GNU/Linux software. I am now using it both professionally and personally.
The deb/rpm barrier is still there to some extent. I still support rpm systems. I still maintain packages using rpm. Therefore I have increased my workload somewhat because now when I create packages I need to create them using both deb and rpm formats. However, on Debian systems I do very little in the way of maintaining fixed or updated packages. I submit bugs into the Debian bug tracking system when I find them. And most of the time the bugs get fixed! Coming from Red Hat I can't tell you how nice this is. I don't need to maintain my own Debian packages for most things like I do with Red Hat. I only need to maintain them for what is truly my own software. This is a HUGE benefit.
Recent news... Red Hat is having a major change to their business model. This adds more incentive to use Debian over Red Hat.
http://www.redhat.com/apps/support/errata/
Red Hat Linux -- Red Hat's policy for Red Hat Linux distributions is to provide maintenance for at least 12 months. At certain times, Red Hat may extend errata maintenance for certain popular releases of the operating system. End of Life dates for errata maintenance for currently supported products are listed below:
Red Hat Linux 9 (Shrike) April 30, 2004 Red Hat Linux 8.0 (Psyche) December 31, 2003 Red Hat Linux 7.3 (Valhalla) December 31, 2003 Red Hat Linux 7.2 (Enigma) December 31, 2003 Red Hat Linux 7.1 (Seawolf) December 31, 2003
And support only included errata and security updates, not a guarentee for functionality updates. Functionality updates were for new releases. I believe Red Hat expects the Fedora project to pick up this responsibility.
Red Hat is attempting to reduce costs by switching to a Debian-style development model. They have decided to stop producing "consumer" releases and will concentrate on larger enterprise level service agreements. See these references for information. This is important information of which all Red Hat users should be aware.
http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/08/11/1536205&tid=23 http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/10/01/1417208&mode=thread&tid=51 http://www.fedora.us/index-main.html http://www.fedora.us/ http://fedora.redhat.com/
Fedora looks to be a good direction for Linux. However, it looks to be starting out where Debian was ten years ago. Fedora is struggling with organization and structure. Debian is ten years ahead of Fedora in this regard. If I am going to pour my energy into a distribution why should I try to raise Fedora up to the level of Debian when I can start with Debian and push it higher? Why should I use an rpm distribution that has publicly stated it is trying to be the Debian of Red Hat when I could be using the real Debian?
With this I am going to trail off. This page is really under construction. More when I pick this page up again later.