[clug] Debian session for any Choobs?

[Hal Ashburner]

Michael James wrote:
>
> I've bitten the bullet and am trying to learn Debian.
>
>
> Topics:
>     Lightning tour of Installation*
>     Apt from an RPM user's perspective.
>    
This might be one of those "from 1000ft" things.
the rpm equivalent is a thing called dpkg. The packages themselves end 
in .deb rather than .rpm. Apt is the equivalent of something like yum or 
(is it yast on suse?)
The basics seem to translate pretty easily nowadays.
Let's just list them. To start it off:

1)To find and install and uninstall a package

 apt-cache search $pkgname
 apt-cache show $fullpkgname
 apt-get install $fullpkgname
 apt-get remove $fullpkgname
vs
 yum search $pkgname
 yum info $fullpkgname
 yum install $fullpkgname
 yum remove $fullpkgname


2)To update your system
 apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
vs
 yum update

3)The file/directory to edit to configure which mirror to point at 
(hopefully your ISP's unmetered mirror)

 /etc/apt/sources.list
vs
 /etc/yum.repos.d/


4) which pkg does that file come from?
 dpkg --search /path/to/file
vs
 rpm -qf /path/to/file


5) Gui front end whit the goal that you don't have to know any of the above?
 aptitude (also does curses which is handy for server use)
vs
 gpk-application




<snip all of the below if you it reply to add to the list do feel free 
not to read it, it's a bit ranty-rantpants>

Back in the days of Red Hat 6 or so, moving to debian was more of a jolt 
but having apt was so brilliant as yum didn't exist yet and apt hadn't 
yet been ported to work with rpms, that you didn't mind the pain of 
moving. The debian commitment to standards is also semi-legendary, this 
kind of commitment is also part of the cause of the semi-legendary 
flame-wars.

On a laptop if you're running the same desktop environment 
(gnome/kde/xfce/whatever) under both distros it's kind of hard to tell 
the difference, which is exactly as it should be. This means if you get 
totally crapped off with the behaviour of ubuntu, canonical or novell 
you can switch to fedora or debian or gentoo or ... very easily and of 
course, vice-versa.
The difference in ease of use between all the distros is pretty marginal 
nowadays, I'm not always convinced this is the best criteria to choose. 
There's more going on in my choice to use linux on my personal desktop 
systems than rating all the technical dimensions of the various OSs and 
distros and then picking a winner, although that is obviously exactly 
what you do for people you advise - unless they specify otherwise.
Now I haven't heard anybody here indulging in RedHat or Fedora bashing 
which is good, but when you do hear some as unfortunately it is around, 
it might be worth while keeping in mind they are both financially 
successful as well as having a peerless record on commitment to a 100% 
capital F Free distribution. The fact they didn't waver in this was one 
of the factors that led to qt being released under the gpl, for example. 
Also they have paid developers (and paid them properly) to write a bunch 
of the code without which a bunch of other distros would not exist and 
released it under a Free license. I look forward to the day when 
Canonical can point to this kind of contribution to the wider community 
outside their own distribution. Until they can do this, even it were 
nicer to use, which in my experience, it really isn't, I don't care for 
it as much as many of the others out there*. But ubuntu fans might like 
to take that with a grain of salt as I also don't find it a reason to 
admire a man (or woman) for taking the world's most expensive joyride. 
I'm an arch capitalist but this level of conspicuous consumption is 
something I find distasteful. I'm aware this could be enhancing the 
annoyance I feel with certain tchincal aspects of the ubuntu 
distribution. And do please notice I'm not criticising canonical 
employees or ubuntu users in the above at all.


Hal Ashburner


*I thought I'd loathe gentoo for example, I was wrong, it's rather nice 
for certain uses. using emerge isn't a million miles away from apt/dpkg 
and yum/rpm either.