[PLUG] "Gender" issues

[Nels Tomlinson]

I've been wondering about debian.  The auto-upgrade feature of aptget 
sounds great, but how practical is it over a (painfully slow, with 
Purdue as the isp) dialup connection?  I have visions of turning aptget 
loose and seeing my connection cut off three hours later after getting 
half of the first package downloaded ... time after time after time.

On the other hand, it would be nice to be able to upgrade incrementally 
and automatically as I've heard debian allows.  I gather that the 
unstable version of debian is about as up-to-date as Mandrake, subject 
to the requirement that stuff should have some probability of working.

Does it work with a local mirror, so that I could burn a copy from 
csociety in one of the pucc labs and carry it home (that means that I'd 
have to figure out how to burn a cd under windows; I don't know how to 
do it without xcdroast or cdrecord!)?  If I don't like an upgrade, will 
it downgrade automatically?  If I bring my laptop into the  install 
fest, could someone give me a hand getting going with debian?  I played 
with it once when I knew a little less than I do now, and gave up before 
  I got X11 working.

Thanks,
Nels

Seth Heckard wrote:

> Charles Allen wrote:
> 
>>   I was wondering if you guys could inform me of the strengths and 
>>weaknesses of the major distributions.  I am sinserely curious about 
>>them.  I curretnly use RH7.1 and I wonder if there's a distro out there 
>>more suited to my ability level and needs.  Is there a site that takes a 
>>third party view at the different distros?
>>
> 
> Every once in a while a distro review will pop up on Slashdot or
> one of the other Linux news sites.  However, in my experience
> they are all fairly weak reviews that really don't tell you
> anything.  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, because you only install something once.
> 
> My advice, play around with several of them.  If you have some
> unused space on your hard disk, repartition it and install a
> distro.  Play around with it for a week, then try another one.
> After about a month, you should have a good idea of what works
> well for you and what you hate.
> 
> If you know how to recompile a kernel and make packages, you
> can make any distribution into about anything you want.  One
> doesn't really have to be limited by what is given.
> 
> Of course, once you try Debian, you won't want to use anything
> else :-)
> 
> Seth Heckard / sdh@purdue.edu
>