[PLUG] "Gender" issues

[Kyler Laird]

Seth Heckard <sdh@purdue.edu> writes:

>For example, every review I've read focuses on the
>installer.  I could care less about how pretty it is as long as
>it works,

I've been a Mandrake user for quite awhile.  I've
been comfortable with Mandrake's install process,
but I recently gave in to the Debian users around
me.  (I still have three machines running Mandrake
but that will change.)

The Debian install is certainly non-trivial.  I
even called for help on one of my installs.  (I
had pretty much just observed the earlier installs
on my machines).  It took us a little bit to 
figure out that I had missed a step in getting the
network set up.

>because you only install something once.

When I used Mandrake, this was not true.  I would
do a fresh install of each version.  To me, that's
the real distinction between Mandrake/Red Hat and
Debian.  If I were still using Mandrake, I'd be
getting ready to put 8.1 on them today.  What an
ordeal that would be!  (I tried a beta and could
not even install it.)

With Debian, however, I just upgrade whenever I
want.  I don't have to wait for Mandrake to
package a snapshot of package versions; I can get
them whenever I want.

I suspect that Mandrake has something like this
too (Cooker) and that the recent package managers
could rival apt-get, but I tried looking into 
such things and finally gave up.  With Debian, it
is a no-brainer.

>Of course, once you try Debian, you won't want to use anything
>else :-)

I'm glad that I tried Mandrake and Red Hat first.
It makes me appreciate Debian.

--kyler