Fedora isn’t the only community supported Linux distribution that’s worth looking at as a Linux desktop. Debian, the distribution with the largest base of available software packages and the largest development community, has now come of age.
Saturday, February 12th, 2005
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Over the last few months, I’ve been paying a lot ofattention to community Linux distributions. In particular, I’ve shown you what you can do with Fedora, the opensource software project managed by Red Hat that’s both ashowcase for leading-edge open source technology and a foundry forRed Hat’s commercial product, Red Hat EnterpriseLinux( RHEL).
But Fedora isn’t the only community supported Linux distribution that’s worth looking at as a Linux desktop.Debian, the distribution with the largest base ofavailable software packages and the largest development community,has now come of age.
What’s that you say? Debian is too hard to install? Debian’s driver support isn’t up to par or as polishedas the commercial distros or Fedora? Au contraire, myyoung padawan: Debian isn’t just one distribution,but a family of related Linux distros and each variant has itsunique advantages. Chances are that at least one Debian fits yourdesktop requirements.
Lets start with the mother distribution, Debian itself.
Debian GNU/Linux
There’s been a lot of cracks made about Debian, some ofwhich, I admit, have come from yours truly.
“Its nearly impossible to install! ”
“It takes forever to get out, and the community is rifewith politics that hinder its advancement! ”
“Its developers and advocates are rabid religious fanaticswith poor hygiene that are even less-equipped socially than othergeeks to get dates with the opposite or the same sex.”
I admit that while these are exaggerations( well, ok, maybe notthe last one), there is some truth to them. Debian is perhaps theHassidics or Mennonites of the…
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