From linuxastro-admin@donar.cv.nrao.edu Mon Nov 10 15:52:49 2003 From: Richard To: linuxastro@donar.cv.nrao.edu Subject: [linuxastro]Re: RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, Debian... where next? Patrick > Let me summarise briefly what we've been thinking for NRAO. We've been > a RedHat shop for years (since 1996 I think) and have a lot invested in > this distro (kickstart environment, hundreds of desktops and servers). > We're looking at how Fedora is shaping up, and the initial rough > consensus seems to be that's the path of least resistance for us. > However, it's not necessarily the only way to go; I hear ATNF, one of > the institutions we collaborate with a lot, is using Debian. If you look at our archive you'll see our own discussion about Fedora is taking place between some sys admins and programmers... http://krom.meiring.org.uk/sheflug/mailarchive/2003/11/msg00046.html follow the thread. I've seen similar things around the world. I'm on the Fermilab list. There was a recent meeting to discuss where to go from here at Fermilab. I've also been involved in some IRC chat with people in New York and Sydney. A lot of them have just moved over to Debian. I can't blame them for doing that. I helped build a Debian Beo cluster at the Linux Beer Hike two years ago. Seems like Debian is the way to go. I'm using an SuSE 9.0 workstation to write to you. Their licence is much too restrictive for anyone to use their software. People like Ruediger Berlich and Rainer Link and myself built the company. The have now left and the people who run SuSE in Germany know very little about open source or free software. Or, if they do know anything they are not making it obvious. So, where to go next ? Maybe this needs more discussion and analysis than most of us realise ? I write for UK and European Linux magazines from time to time. I think I may just write something about this whole thing for a magazine. -- Richard Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society www.sheflug.org _______________________________________________ From: James Wren To: Wes Young Cc: Patrick P Murphy , linuxastro@donar.cv.nrao.edu Subject: Re: [linuxastro]RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, Debian... where next? I'm currently downloading the newest (only) version of Fedora and will be testing it out in the coming week. I'll let you know how it goes. jim ---------------------------------------------------------------- James Wren Phone: (505) 665-5941 NIS-2, MS D436 e-mail: jwren@lanl.gov Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545 On Mon, Nov 10, 2003 at 12:14:22PM -0700, Wes Young wrote: > I switched to Mandrake after RedHat raised their prices (5 or 6 years > ago). It's an RPM based system distro and I've been pretty pleased with > it (i.e. I run it on mine and my wife's computers!). I would guess it > would mesh well with NRAO's linux management scheme. > > wes > > Patrick P Murphy wrote: > > >Greetings, and sorry if I awoke a collective sleep mode on this list :-) > > > >There's been some considerable chatter going on right now in various > >software groups in the Astronomy world (NRAO and Starlink to name two) > >about what to do given the changes in the Red Hat Linux support > >structure. I know many of you won't give a rat's *** about this as > >y'all don't run RedHat, but many of us do and I bet there's a fairly > >strong undercurrent among these people on this topic right about now. > >This message is an attempt to bring that to the surface. > > > >Let me summarize briefly what we've been thinking for NRAO. We've been > >a RedHat shop for years (since 1996 I think) and have a lot invested in > >this distro (kickstart environment, hundreds of desktops and servers). > >We're looking at how Fedora is shaping up, and the initial rough > >consensus seems to be that's the path of least resistance for us. > >However, it's not necessarily the only way to go; I hear ATNF, one of > >the instutions we collaborate with a lot, is using Debian. > > > >So if you have any thoughts on the issue, I for one would be interested > >in hearing them. > > > > - Pat > > > > > > > -- > wes young > wyoung@aoc.nrao.edu > > > _______________________________________________ > Linuxastro mailing list > Linuxastro@listmgr.cv.nrao.edu > http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/linuxastro _______________________________________________ Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 16:08:04 -0600 From: Zed Pobre To: linuxastro@donar.cv.nrao.edu Subject: Re: [linuxastro]RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, Debian... where next? On Mon, Nov 10, 2003 at 01:58:31PM -0500, Patrick P Murphy wrote: > Greetings, and sorry if I awoke a collective sleep mode on this list :-) I'm just pleased that there are people actually on it. > Let me summarize briefly what we've been thinking for NRAO. We've been > a RedHat shop for years (since 1996 I think) and have a lot invested in > this distro (kickstart environment, hundreds of desktops and servers). > We're looking at how Fedora is shaping up, and the initial rough > consensus seems to be that's the path of least resistance for us. > However, it's not necessarily the only way to go; I hear ATNF, one of > the instutions we collaborate with a lot, is using Debian. >=20 > So if you have any thoughts on the issue, I for one would be interested > in hearing them. =20 Well, being a Debian Developer, I'm obviously going to lean towards the Debian side, but I bring this up only so that people know that if you have a problem with a Debian astro package, there's someone on the list who will know where to point you. Oh, and for those of you going, "hey, there he is, get him!", I *am* trying to work with someone getting the new IRAF packages built. With luck, he'll be able to take over maintainership and you can all go throw things at him instead of me for a while. :-P Zed Pobre a.k.a. Zed Pobre PGP key and fingerprint available on finger; encrypted mail welcomed. ________________________________________________________________________ From linuxastro-admin@donar.cv.nrao.edu Mon Nov 10 16:23:45 2003 From: Richard To: Wes Young Cc: Patrick P Murphy , linuxastro@donar.cv.nrao.edu Subject: Re: [linuxastro]RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, Debian... where next? Patrick > I switched to Mandrake after RedHat raised their prices (5 or 6 years > ago). It's an RPM based system distro and I've been pretty pleased with > it (i.e. I run it on mine and my wife's computers!). I would guess it > would mesh well with NRAO's Linux management scheme. Further to the previous one which didn't come back from the list to me. We - at the Royal Astronomical Society - did discuss the use of Mandrake at some length some years ago. We came down to the conclusion that we really wanted to avoid the kind of commercial lock in that RedHat and SuSE represented. Although, this was probably something to do with my own argument. Myself and the fella who runs Manchester Computing Centre - www.mcc.ac.uk - which is the main Cray computing centre in the north of England thought that Mandrake would eventually reach a point of lock in where people and institutions just couldn't get out of it. Which is why we came around to thinking about Debian. At that time there wasn't a pretty KDE 3.1.4 desktop and Gnome was there but not all that good. Whatever happens with the RAS and Linux - if it ever does - the fact remains that a lot of academic departments turned to Debian due to the cost of RedHat and then the SuSE licence which help them up too much. I suppose that in the States things may be slightly different but I did get back from Washington D.C recently where I had a long discussion about all of this with someone who spends a long time working at NASA Goddard. -- Richard F.R.A.S www.sheflug.org ___________________________________________________________________________ From linuxastro-admin@donar.cv.nrao.edu Mon Nov 10 18:06:42 2003 From: Michael Olberg To: Richard cc: Wes Young , Patrick P Murphy , Subject: Re: [linuxastro]RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, Debian... where next? Hej, A few comments from Onsala Space Observatory where we have been running Linux since the first half of the 90s. We went for SuSE then, mainly because they were much more adopted to European needs at the time (character sets, paper formats etc.) than their competitors (mainly Red Hat and Slackware) I (being the "Linux-guru" at the observatory) have also started to look at Debian. Leaving license issues aside for the moment, although I do consider them to be important (the recent take-over of SUSE by Novell is frightening), here are a few remarks I have so far on practical matterers: Debian's easy upgrade tool is indeed a very attractive feature. I am not sure I have found the right flavour yet, stable vs. unstable. Installation on e.g. a new Dell model is a bit of a pain with Debian. It will require kernel builds, upgrading of xf86, etc. On the other hand, in our experience SuSE has always been really strong in hardware support. In particular the development of xf86 drivers for new graphics boards has had lots of support from SuSE. Installation on the same Dell PC will happen in a few minutes. Init scripts for the various run-levels look like a mess in Debian, e.g. there doesn't seem to be a clear distinction between levels with X and without. System configuration appears scattered, or I haven't figured it out yet. No easy X configuration that comes with the distro. Once all obstacles are overcome with your first Debian installation, cloning of machines seems rather easy, as you can use dpkg's --get-selections and --set-selections feature to copy the info about installed softwarevery easily. I haven't yet tried to recompile Debian packages , I think most of their software is compiled for 386s still and will waste CPU potential. My real hope is that Debian will make life as a system administrator easier in the long run, in spite of all I said above. And I really like their 'mission'. Please, keep this discussion going. I will certainly follow it with interest. regards, Michael On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Richard wrote: > Patrick > > > I switched to Mandrake after RedHat raised their prices (5 or 6 years > > ago). It's an RPM based system distro and I've been pretty pleased with > > it (i.e. I run it on mine and my wife's computers!). I would guess it > > would mesh well with NRAO's Linux management scheme. > > > Further to the previous one which didn't come back from the list to > me. > > We - at the Royal Astronomical Society - did discuss the use of > Mandrake at some length some years ago. We came down to the > conclusion that we really wanted to avoid the kind of commercial lock > in that RedHat and SuSE represented. Although, this was probably > something to do with my own argument. Myself and the fella who runs > Manchester Computing Centre - www.mcc.ac.uk - which is the main > Cray computing centre in the north of England thought that Mandrake > would eventually reach a point of lock in where people and > institutions just couldn't get out of it. Which is why we came around > to thinking about Debian. At that time there wasn't a pretty KDE > 3.1.4 desktop and Gnome was there but not all that good. > > Whatever happens with the RAS and Linux - if it ever does - the fact > remains that a lot of academic departments turned to Debian due to the > cost of RedHat and then the SuSE licence which help them up too much. > I suppose that in the States things may be slightly different but I > did get back from Washington D.C recently where I had a long > discussion about all of this with someone who spends a long time > working at NASA Goddard. > > > > > -- > Richard > F.R.A.S > > www.sheflug.org --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Olberg | e-mail: olberg@oso.chalmers.se Onsala Space Observatory | tel: +46-31-7725507 (work) +46-300-10778 (home) S-43992 Onsala, SWEDEN | fax: +46-31-7725590 -------------------- This quote left blank intentionally ------------------ _______________________________________________ From: Fabricio Ferrari To: linuxastro@donar.cv.nrao.edu Subject: Re: [linuxastro]RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, Debian... where next? Hi, I already gave my comments, but there is a point lacking in our discussion: the purpose of the Linux box. I have some 10 years experience now with linux, both in corporate, research and academic environment, cluster, all kind of servers and so on. I think the distros could be divided according to how it will be used. If one wants to run a desktop box with all the facilities available, then Mandrake, Suse, Conectiva or (in the recent past) Red Hat are the best choice. They are easy to install and use, and have the cutting edge versions of all you want. But, if the box is intended to be a server of something, then a more robust distro should be used, to avoid future problems. Mandrake and RedHat are not designed for this purpose, they are build to have as many features as possible and have already included bug software in it. RedHat have released a version with a buggy GCC compiler, Mandrake has always had minor bugs in the basic software. Comparing to Debian, the situation is quite different. There is not one "last version" but three. They are call 'stable', 'testing' and 'unstable'. Now, stable is 'woody', testing is 'sarge' and unstable are 'sid'. Stable have only the software that have been fully tested. If you are very conservative about the box, this should be your choice. Testing contains software that have been tested in the unstable version but are not fully trustable. Testing are in practice as Mandrake and RedHat latest versions. You can guess what unstable is. Well, I just wanted to add these comments I thought would be useful. My best regards to all linux users :-) Fabricio -- Dr. Fabricio Ferrari ferrari@if.ufrgs.br www.ferrari.pro.br Departamento de Astronomia, Instituto de Fisica Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul Av. Bento Goncalves 9500, CP 15051 Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil 91501-970 On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Fabricio Ferrari wrote: > > > Hi all, > > > I have made up my mind to switch to Debian. People here have been talking a lot > about RedHat and what to do and it seems that Debian is a good choice for some > reasons. First, it is a non-profit distro and will never change its direction as > did RedHat and could also Mandrake, Suse, Conectiva (here in Brasil) and so on. > Second, the instalation and upgrade proccesses seems to be among the best. > Unlike commercial distros they are not interested in saying "we have the new > version with all you have waited for and blah blah" but give the best running > software for the users. Once you install the basic system, which can be done > with few floppies, you can install all the rest via network, choosing/upgrading > every software you want. Some guys here told me they have installed Debian once > a few years ago and just upgraded the system since then. The package utilites > (dselect, apt-get) are very smart and do the job by themselves, much more easy > and complete than RPM's. Partly due to this, Debian is known as the most stable > and secure Linux Distro. Also due to the Debian structure, you can install > Debian or any other Debian-based (Knoppix, Kurumin, etc.) and you'll have the > same upgrade/install possibilities. > > Well, I am not marketing Debian :-) RedHat have been my choice for years, but I > won't make the same mistake again. Now, I'll have a really open/free distro, the > same people that make it good you assure me it will continue to exist. > > Best regards to all. > > > Fabricio > > _______________________________________________ Linuxastro mailing list Linuxastro@listmgr.cv.nrao.edu http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/linuxastro From linuxastro-admin@donar.cv.nrao.edu Tue Nov 11 09:10:43 2003 Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 17:37:36 -0600 From: Zed Pobre To: linuxastro@donar.cv.nrao.edu Subject: Re: [linuxastro]RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, Debian... where next? On Tue, Nov 11, 2003 at 12:06:34AM +0100, Michael Olberg wrote: >=20 > I am not sure I have found the right flavour yet, stable vs. unstable. It is possible to run a hybrid, if you are careful. If you regularly update to unstable, you'll probably want to keep an eye on the mailing lists so you can tell if something has just been uploaded that breaks everything (this doesn't happen very often, but it has happened). Debian Stable tends to be appropriate mostly for server configurations that require immensely high uptimes, and where the age of the software isn't important as long as it handles basic functions. For most everything else, you want to update the system to at least a particular snapshot of Unstable (and incidentally, it is possible to set up an apt line that locks you to a snapshot of unstable at a given date, for a few months going backwards, if you know that that set of packages worked well). You will need to monitor the web page and/or the mailing lists for security advisories, however, since the security repository is only for stable. > Init scripts for the various run-levels look like a mess in Debian, e.g. > there doesn't seem to be a clear distinction between levels with X and > without. Runlevel 1 is single-user repair mode. Runlevel 2 can be considered "Default", which will bring up every service you install by default. Runlevels 3 and 4 can be considered "User", which is to say that they start off identical to runlevel 2, but are intended for the user to be able to set up differently if so desired. Any alterations made to the runlevel scripts are preserved (or if they aren't, it's a bug that needs to be reported). Debian doesn't maintain runlevels tied to particular functionalities. The general philosophy is that we give a single reasonable default based on the software packages installed, and trust the sysadmin to customize the rest. > System configuration appears scattered, or I haven't figured it out yet. > No easy X configuration that comes with the distro. If you are running Unstable, you should have been presented with an automatic configuration script when you installed the XFree86 packages. See also /usr/share/doc/xfree86-common/FAQ.gz for how to reconfigure if you have already manually customized a file. > I haven't yet tried to recompile Debian packages , I think most of their > software is compiled for 386s still and will waste CPU potential. Most packages don't show a significant increase in speed by recompiling, and unless you know what you're doing, you can actually slow them down (note that -O3 in particular is kind of unreliable). However, if you feel the need, "apt-get install apt-src apt-build" and customize to your heart's content. --=20 Zed Pobre a.k.a. Zed Pobre PGP key and fingerprint available on finger; encrypted mail welcomed. _______________________________________________ From linuxastro-admin@donar.cv.nrao.edu Tue Nov 11 09:19:10 2003 From: Vincent McIntyre To: Fabricio Ferrari cc: , Neil Killeen Subject: Re: [linuxastro]RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, Debian... where next? Hi all This discussion comes up at a time when we are assessing our switch to Debian; great timing Pat! We switched to Debian over a year ago, and it's been a positive experience. Before we used Red Hat, different versions up to RH6.2. Our main platform has been Solaris and the goal with bringing in linux was to provide a relatively seamless integration at the application level; ie users got more or less the same functionality, irrespective of the OS. I worked with Red Hat for a couple of years, and had no previous contact with Debian; the switch wasn't done for ideological reasons. We got pretty familiar with RH, and used some advanced features, e.g. we use jumpstart for Solaris, so kickstart was not such a big step. However there were relatively few machines installed, so we weren't taking such a large risk in terms of throwing away past work. Our main reasons for switching were that * I wanted out of dependency hell (not such an issue now with apt-rpm?) * I could not find a model for OS updates that would work well for a fleet of machines. Debian's "stable" distribution (updates provide no new functonality, just important bugfixes) seemed a good way to ensure a stable software environment for users & developers, without having to go through a time-consuming vetting process. ("Installing the latest rpms" had been a mixed bag.) I had heard of people in other parts of CSIRO subscribing to RHN and being generally happy, but couldn't dig out anyone who was actually managing a few tens of hosts in this way. * the existence of a clear, publically visible packaging policy that explained the WHY of various packaging decisions was very attractive. Technically there is little to choose between rpms or debs as formats; but the packaging policy is a winner. Violations of packaging policy are high-priority bugs. * we were irritated by various little things like gratuituous group renumberings and odd things about the filesystem layout, vs solaris. (Now we have the FHS to referee such things. As it turns out Debian has a little work to do in this area.) One change that I really got messed up by was the rpm3->rpm4 transition. The RH bugzilla people were very helpful, but I was highly unimpressed by the engineering decisions. * gcc-2.96. Enough said. * Fabricio's point about changes in direction forced by commercial necessity was a consideration, which may well become more important on a 5-yr timescale from now. * A couple of colleagues used debian regularly, so there was a bit of guidance (vs none for SuSE). More than a year into production, the things I like are * upgrading is a snap (but for a fleet of machines you do need to do some extra work, I am fiddling with this now). * make-kpkg (the Debian Way to make a new kernel, it vastly simplifies kernel upgrades). * apt-proxy (all hosts on the site send requests to one box that downloads debs from a nearby mirror, or serves up a cached version) * apt-cache search (to find out what is out there) * simple mechanism to install host B with exactly the same packages as on host A. There are some diffcult problems, too. We are trying to work around them; some groups may find other distros fit their needs better. * Hardware support. This is partly Dell's fault, they keep shipping laptops with winmodems and changing vital components to the latest available (bcm4400 anyone?). All the hardware churn means the installer kernel for Debian stable (frozen at release date) doesn't recognize many of the components of a brand new box. The way around this is to build your own install iso, with a more recent kernel. This is not hard, and a bit of googling will quickly turn up information about this. I'm working on a shell script to make it even simpler. Or find a manufacturer who will tell you in enough detail what your new box will contain so that you can predict if all the components are supported. * XFree86 release. Stable is using XFree86-4.1. There are plenty of (now very cheap) cards that are supported by this release, which have better performance than the embedded i8xx chips you typically get in Dells. But if you think you need the performance of a more recent card, "backports" of release 4.2 are available. A backport is a package in the "testing" or "unstable" versions of debian that has been compiled for boxes running "stable". * Java. Debian takes a strict line on software licences, and doesn't approve of Sun's Java licence terms. Blackdown's implementation of Java is available however. The situation is somewhat confusing. We're not doing much java on linux at present, so I haven't taken the time to sort this out. You can of course install sun's tarball into /usr/local, though this means the packaging system does not know you have java. This may give rise to some niggles when you want to install a prepackaged java program. * Installer. The installer ain't pretty, but it is reasonably quick. The looks and the oldish default kernel make installation a trial for some of our staff. Building a custom install kernel makes a big difference. The other big clue is to avoid 'dselect', the old (incredibly reliable but somewhat inscrutable) package manager. Install the minimum and after the basics are there, then add 'aptitude' or 'synaptic'. The next release of Debian (early 04) will have a pretty installer. * Red Hat compatibilty. Because RH typically has more recent versions of various things, eg g++-3.3, programs built on RH may not run on a Debian stable box. However usually you can build from source. The only _astronomical_ software we've found that requires something not provided by Debian stable was AIPS++. For this (gcc-3.2, g++-3.2 are required), we use backports from testing. Debian has made the transition to the new g++ ABI in "testing". This was somewhat painful apparently (we don't use testing in production, so don't much care) but it's complete now and this will become the new stable at the next release. One way around the general problem of "not being Red Hat", which I haven't had time to mess with, is to install RH within VMware. Good practices * knoppix (www.knoppix.de) is a very easy way to try out debian. It is based on debian, it is not exactly what you will get. It's a great tool for checking out the hardware on a new box (for working out which drivers to use) and as a recovery disc. * get systemimager and learn how to use it. We take a disk image of each class of host once we get it working, to speed up installing more boxes of the same type. There is another option called the Fully Automatic Installer (FAI) but I haven't had time to evaluate it. * apt-proxy is a big help and not at all hard to set up. * an old widely supported ethernet card, (or usb ethernet, if the installer kernel supports it) will save you lots of time when you have a box with the latest ethernet card. * backports - www.apt-get.org can help quite a bit. There are two ways to get access to the latest versions of things; make your box install a mix of packages, from "stable" and "testing", or use backports. The former is too messy for a fleet of hosts, IMHO. There are often multiple backports of the same thing however, so exercise caution. I use Adrian Bunk's backports and have had only one problematic application so far. * There is strong temptation to run your box tracking 'testing'. Don't. Testing is the group of packages that is usually the latest available AND have had no "release-critical" bugs reported for some period of time. (The 'unstable' set of packages can, and does, break completely from time to time, but this produces strong pressure for rapid fixes so things don't stay broke for long). The main problem is functionality changes are allowed, and changes occur. This is a source of grief for programmers. If you have only a handful of boxes and don't write code, you can get away with this, but in general you don't need to. It might be worth having just one host tracking testing, as a window on the state of play. * I highly recommend the infrastructures.org website. We don't follow all the practices there but it's something to work towards. I should say that another group (Swinburne U) has had extremely good success with SuSE. Although SuSE got tangled in the Untied Linux mess and now is going to be swallowed by Novell, they have a good reputation. The merge with Novell may be quite a good thing, it's been an innovative company in the past. Last of all, if all you want is a 'free' unix, look closely at freebsd. I've had a few encounters with it and it has always impressed. Because there is a relatively small and coordinated core of developers, things almost always Just Work and they usually have good support for recent hardware. You can build everthing from source, and they package the source so that all the dependencies are handled. I consider it the gold standard in terms of packaging. Cheers Vince Recommended websites http://www.debian.org http://www.aboutdebian.com http://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor http://www.debianuniverse.com _______________________________________________ From linuxastro-admin@donar.cv.nrao.edu Tue Nov 11 04:11:43 2003 From: Carlo Baffa To: linuxastro@donar.cv.nrao.edu Subject: Re: [linuxastro]RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, Debian... where next? On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Fabricio Ferrari wrote: > But, if the box is intended to be a server of something, then a more robust > distro should be used, to avoid future problems. Mandrake and RedHat are not > designed for this purpose, they are build to have as many features as possible I completely agree. Here, at the arcetri infrared laboratory, we have a long tradition to use mandrake for desktop/data reduction use, and the old slackware for servers and above all software developement. For the latest use, I think slack, even if difficult to set-up as debian, and with a less convenient upgrade tool, is really our best choice for device drivers and low-level (hardware related) development. Bye Carlo ---- Carlo Baffa INAF - Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri baffa@arcetri.astro.it Largo Fermi 5 I-50125-Firenze ITALY ------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.skysoft.org The new Astronomical Software Directory _______________________________________________ From linuxastro-admin@donar.cv.nrao.edu Tue Nov 11 04:54:36 2003 From: Jaime Perea To: linuxastro@donar.cv.nrao.edu Subject: Re: [linuxastro]RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, Debian... where next? El Martes, 11 de Noviembre de 2003 10:03, Carlo Baffa escribió: > On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Fabricio Ferrari wrote: > > But, if the box is intended to be a server of something, then a more > > robust distro should be used, to avoid future problems. Mandrake and > > RedHat are not designed for this purpose, they are build to have as many > > features as possible > > I completely agree. Here, at the arcetri infrared laboratory, we have a > long tradition to use mandrake for desktop/data reduction use, and the old > slackware for servers and above all software developement. For the latest > use, I think slack, even if difficult to set-up as debian, and with a less > convenient upgrade tool, is really our best choice for device drivers and > low-level (hardware related) development. I think that the main problem is not a question of which distribution but which is the configuration layout. I mean, it is very easy to install something built on top of redhat in a mdk box, at least this is my experience. We have installed iraf, midas, starlink, aips and all the new python soft from the stsci without any problem. The main trouble come from the lack of compatibility between versions of libc, kernel X11..., and this happen even between different versions of the distributions. In this sense I think that a more "agnostic" configuration approach makes things much easier for system administrators, and following the LSB it will be even easier. All the best -- Jaime D. Perea Duarte. jaime@iaa.es Linux registered user #10472 Dep. Astrofisica Extragalactica. Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (CSIC) Apdo. 3004, 18080 Granada, Spain. _______________________________________________ From linuxastro-admin@donar.cv.nrao.edu Tue Nov 11 10:44:21 2003 Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 09:30:48 -0600 From: Zed Pobre To: linuxastro@donar.cv.nrao.edu Subject: [linuxastro] Re: [linuxastro]RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, Debian... where next? Sender: linuxastro-admin@donar.cv.nrao.edu On Tue, Nov 11, 2003 at 03:13:08PM +0100, Michael Olberg wrote: > On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Zed Pobre wrote: >=20 > > ... > > Well, being a Debian Developer, I'm obviously going to lean > > towards the Debian side, but I bring this up only so that people know > > that if you have a problem with a Debian astro package, there's > > someone on the list who will know where to point you. > > ... >=20 > May I quickly ask you what branch of Debian the astro-packages usually end > up in: stable, testing or unstable? all of them? And would you mind > including suitable entries for /etc/apt/sources.list in your reply? The way the system works is that developers upload their packages to unstable. If the package is found to be without serious bugs for a certain period of time, and all of its dependencies can also be found in or moved to testing, the package is moved to the testing distribution. At some point, there is a freeze, and a selection of packages from the previous stable and the current testing are made into the new stable distribution. You should probably use the debian mirror closest to you. I don't know of an official mirror in Sweden, unfortunately. In the US, I'm using such lines as: deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free deb http://mirror.math.lsu.edu/debian stable main contrib non-free deb-src http://mirror.math.lsu.edu/debian stable main contrib non-free deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US testing/non-US main contrib non-= free deb-src http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US testing/non-US main contrib = non-free deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/non-US main contrib non= -free deb-src http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/non-US main contrib= non-free I'm using a mirror at Louisiana State University for stable, but this is probably not what most people want to do. --=20 Zed Pobre a.k.a. Zed Pobre PGP key and fingerprint available on finger; encrypted mail welcomed. ___________________________________________________________________________ From linuxastro-admin@donar.cv.nrao.edu Tue Nov 11 10:46:23 2003 Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 09:38:57 -0600 From: Zed Pobre To: linuxastro@donar.cv.nrao.edu Subject: [linuxastro] Re: [linuxastro]RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, Debian... where next? A few quick notes: On Tue, Nov 11, 2003 at 12:08:47PM +1100, Vincent McIntyre wrote: > * Java. Debian takes a strict line on software licences, and doesn't > approve of Sun's Java licence terms. Blackdown's implementation of > Java is available however. The situation is somewhat confusing. > We're not doing much java on linux at present, so I haven't taken > the time to sort this out. > You can of course install sun's tarball into /usr/local, though > this means the packaging system does not know you have java. This > may give rise to some niggles when you want to install a prepackaged > java program. There are also unofficial deb packages: deb http://www.tux.org/pub/java/debian stable main non-free deb http://www.tux.org/pub/java/debian unstable main non-free > Good practices [...] > * apt-proxy is a big help and not at all hard to set up. A variation: just set up a Squid proxy with a large cache and set it to store objects as large as 100MB. > Last of all, if all you want is a 'free' unix, look closely at freebsd. > I've had a few encounters with it and it has always impressed. Because > there is a relatively small and coordinated core of developers, things > almost always Just Work and they usually have good support for recent > hardware. You can build everthing from source, and they package the > source so that all the dependencies are handled. I consider it the > gold standard in terms of packaging. Note that Debian also handles source dependencies (apt-get build-dep xxx). --=20 Zed Pobre a.k.a. Zed Pobre PGP key and fingerprint available on finger; encrypted mail welcomed. --IiVenqGWf+H9Y6IX Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.0 (GNU/Linux) iQEVAwUBP7ECkR0207zoJUw5AQExHgf/UnlKk5cpEa1nsjlCVq9eWaTlqwSOrJSG d5UfBhlvfiRj11hrBC5mUOhSsVcepmQjMcbV+Kcmru1B80wCgrRUyqa3zVlhl6Jy aigpOnbv3Lq+fdvyXJiSeZyibl4ODq+60xl/dEI523Bx8SQfVDeg37UoWMt4Lrr+ BgLUzvyo6cRXh1HMdZspqB9mkma48M2jN5ihYsG+gD6Vdt3u3mRUbkIy1Hbz8w9z K//61rsHhKLESBab/ioaxJ5v30xeQSLjSUDzvjxxC52dFZwzHNSBPxY9NeFdJujd TjGQ+RK5TijKAG2tlTxGglTEsoIW8rjK7j71LewlPDOLMcjFyopLIQ== =zJMY -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --IiVenqGWf+H9Y6IX-- _______________________________________________