[aclug-L] Re: Why Debian?

[Carl D Cravens <raven@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 12 Oct 2000, Greg House wrote:

> Guess I'll be the dissenting opinion. My personal opinion is that Debian is
> probably great for systems you take a long time to very carefully set
> up...tweak...tweak again...get it JUUUUST right, and then never touch again.
> Provided systems that are using older hardware and don't need any of the
> features or fixes of current software released...

This perfectly describes my personal Debian server and most of what we do
here at Boeing as well.  We want to set it up and never touch it again.  
When you've got nearly 100 HP-UX servers alone (not to mention the
RS/6000, Sequents and Suns in the other groups) you want to set it up and
mess with it as little as possible.
 
> At work, I set up things that need to look like what my real world customers
> either are using or might use. 

My real-world customers use whatever the official Boeing solution is.  If
the official solution is Debian, they'll use Debian or I don't have to
support them.  (At this time, I don't have to support anybody because
Linux ain't official.) 

> I've really wanted to like Debian because I like the philosophy of the
> organization behind it, but I've tried 3 different revisions of it, at
> different times over a period of 2-3 years, and have always found it tedious.

> The installations took hours and hours of manually answering questions about
> how I wanted a ton of packages which  I didn't care about configured and then
> when it was all said and done still didn't have everything I wanted installed 
> or
> configured.

It does have pre-designed installation "types" (server, workstation,
developer, etc.), though it still has the problem of all those packages
asking how you want them configured.  Though it doesn't take me hours and
hours... I can have a Debian server installed and running rather quickly. 

>  It has the steepest learning curve of any Linux distribution I've
> seen. I can't possibly imagine recommending it to a new user. 

We're not recommending it to new users... it will be supported by
professional Unix admins with years of experience.  I just need strong
evidence to give to non-technical management about which distro they
should choose. 

Linux won't be a desktop machine at Boeing for years at best.  Partially
because it lacks the apps, partially because Boeing is big on
enterprise-wide standards and making everybody conform, and partially
because management (and even some of the old-timer technical folks) are
afraid of open-source software.

> If you want to see Linux adoption increase at your company, I think an
> easier distribution is needed.

Adoption isn't a matter of getting people to use it, it's a matter of
getting non-technical management to get over their fear of open-source
software and accept that Linux is a stable operating system that can save
them a lot of money.  We don't need to be running static-page web servers
on HP-9000's that cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars when that
same task could be handled by an Intel box running Linux. 

> After several weeks of reading manuals and readme files, you might end
> up with an extremely stable system that won't give much trouble down the line,
> but that just doesn't fit with the real world expectations that most of our
> industry has for a piece of software. Most people don't want to know that much
> about it, they just want something that runs...quickly and painlessly. I think
> many other distributions do that better then Debian.

You seem to be assuming that we're going to hand CD's to people and say,
"Here, install it, give me a call if you can't figure it out."  That's not
the way we work... we, Unix Technical Services, do the installs on all
servers.  We won't be looking at Linux for workstations, so the end-user
is going to see Linux as just another of those many Unix systems they
interact with daily.  I don't need to read manuals or readmes to install
Debian and my end-user isn't going to come close to installing
it.  They're just going to run the apps I give them.  

The real-world expectations of Unix admins aren't the real-world
expectations of users who buy nothing but Microsoft products.  Quickly and
painlessly isn't as important here as stable and robust.  If Red Hat's
quick and painless *and* stable and robust, great... but I'm hearing that
it's not the latter.  I don't mind putting eight hours into configuring a
system if it means I don't have to put out fires on it on a regular basis. 

> As far as all the "buggy" releases of RedHat. All I can say is that I haven't
> run into anything that held me up much. Even the worst Red Hat release would
> seem to be a lot better (quality wise) then NT. If it's an easy sell into your
> organization because of the name recognition, why not?

'cause I don't have to support NT, but I do have to support Linux.  That
Red Hat isn't as bad as NT doesn't matter to me... what matters to me is
that the distro we choose has to be stable, easy to manage for the
experience Unix admin, and easy to upgrade. 

In the specific instance of the lan group wanting to try Linux... they're
already sold on trying Linux, but they had no clue which one to try.  So
they tried the one with the most name recognition, which isn't necessarily
the best approach.  

--
Carl D Cravens (raven@xxxxxxxxxxx)
Don't bother pressing that key, there is no Esc.


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