Open Discussion - RedHat vs Debian

[tengel]

Ok, I don't tend to join many "mine is bigger than yours" discussions, but somehow I'm feeling like responding.  I'll probably regret it.  But anyways, here goes:

On Thu, Apr 04, 2002 at 01:08:35PM -0800, Caleb Clark wrote:
> 
> 1.	Install - less cooky, to me debian was much smoother

I would tend to disagree, and this is a matter of choice -- the debian install asks too many questions, wants too many answers, and requires too much attention for my personal taste.

I consider myself rather experienced -- I've built dozens of redhat boxes, so this leads into a non-trivial discussion of "well, how do you know what tool is doing what?" and so on.  Simply, I know what everything I need does by default, and know what I have to change post-install.

With a RH72 install, I can rip through the initial setup (text based), select/deselect all the packages I want, and have it on it's way in 15mins.  I can then walk away and do something else without worrying if it's going to pause and ask me inane questions like "how do you want to configure exim?". Please.

Post install, it's trivial to finish that stuff up (more below).

> 2.	Post Install - Look at number of processes running on a debian
> box after typical install compared to redhat, With redhat I was
> seeing up to and beyond 30 procs. With debian, its just the essentials.
> Gettys, init, and a few loggers.

Again, a matter of choice and experience.  I could care less what processes are running, because (after applying all updates, more on that below) I perform a complete security audit of the system using nmap and so forth, stop and remove anything I don't want running right now, etc.  By the time I'm done, it's lean and mean (done is usually within an hour or two). After doing it so many times, you already start to know what you do and don't want...

> 3.	redhat 7.x busted - all I have to say about xinetd /barf. I know
> several ppl that had terrible problems trying to get that to work.
> Mainly tftp, telnet, ftpd etc. I couldent stand it.

While I've never had problems with xinetd (even wrote a few of my own customs for special services that didn't have inetd->xinetd conversions), I usually end up turning xinetd off completely.  ProFTPd replaces wu-ftpd, and telnet is never used. Lather, rinse, repeat -- pretty much every tool you need has a good alternative that is not xinetd based.  And easy to install, thanks to freshrpms.net and others.

> 4.	Redhat became trendy - So what, but.. All those little helpers
> that are being intalled, the hardware detecto thingy at boot and
> stuff. This is Linux - not windows thank you very much.

I assume you mean "kudzo" -- yup, this thing gets turned off immediately.  But, a lot of people like that kinda crap, so to each his own. ;)

> 5.	RPM is cool, I cant say anything bad about that, but... Apt is
> pretty dern awsome too!

Apples and tomatoes -- RPM is compared with DEB, not APT.  APT is readily available for RPM based distros nowadays, and I use it to pretty much finish up an install lickity split with a simple "rpm -i apt-blahblah.rpm; apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade" and walk away.  Again, no questions to answer and cause me to sttay with the maschine, it all just works (the questions are a feature of DEB, not apt).

> Debian I would recommend 100% for anyone that is familiar with linux or
> using in a server enviroment.
> For ppl that are starting out, Redhat or some derivative would be the
> way to go.

mmmm, again a matter of choice -- they both do fine in either capcity.  I've built many, many RPMs and only a handful of DEBs for playing and testing, and as a packager I much prefer RPMs methodlogy instead (start a new thread for RPM vs. DEB debates).  And it really depends what you use the server for -- I never install any of the packaged Apache's (debian OR redhat) but instead roll my own, along with PHP, <database of the day>, Java engines, and so on down the line.  Replacing sendmail with exim RPMs has become more of my practice as well (see http://www.xtronics.com/exim/ for a drop-in replacement).

So anyways, I have yet to see a real valid arguement as to why debian would be "better" than redhat.  What would constitute a good one?  Not quite sure, but maybe something like "the packaged debian kernel is more well tuned for high stress workloads and VM swapping than the redhat kernel is".  Arguments like "I like choosing at the beginning" or "I like the auto-hardware detection" are just plain judgemental and not really well discussed.

(hey, newbolt only paused on me 5 times during this email! woohoo.  Now, if only we could get the dumb term fixed on it so my backspaces work correctly in mutt/vi, I'd be set. ;P )

-te

-- 
Troy Engel
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