Re: Problems with Redhat 9

> I never said superior! :) Debian is a great OS! I have just grown into RedHat,
> and I have come to appreciate the lack of hack and customization time that is
> usually not needed.

I disagree on that point; I would say I can build a Debian system faster
than a RH system (kickstart nonwithstanding); mostly because with RH it's
more trouble to install packages, and you need to cut away a lot of cruft
that they install by default.

apt4rpm or grab of course will change that equation somewhat. :)
(and I use both).

> Hardware and Software vendors typically defaults to supporting RedHat
> specifically, 

can't gainsay that.

I've usually found that it's not impossible to get things to work with
Debian tho. 
Most of the 3rd-party commercial RPMs that I've seen are for device drivers
or the like; and won't work if you don't have the default kernel for that RH
version. 
since I almost never have a stock RH kernel on a box that I'm working on;
it's usually necessary to (at best) fiddle with getting the driver installed
anyway.

but maybe my experiences and environment are different from yours. :)

> and I am usually very comfortable installing RH on the
> technically challenged desktop. 

I always look at desktops as being completely separate from the underlying
Unix OS. An administrator will always have to customize them in a buisness
environment; so I don't see that it matters what the default setup is, nor
what package scheme you use (rpm, deb, inst, tgz, autopkg...).

for the home user; RH may be a win, because it gives you lots of choices,
rather than requiring you to know what you need ahead of time. So I'll say
it has a place there. (not to say it doesn't have a place in other
situations tho).

Carl.
-- 
Systems Administrator
Real-Time Enterprises
www.real-time.com