down for the count

[Charles Hallenbeck]

On 2000-09-30 speakup at braille.uwo.ca said:
   >Hi
   >This is mearly my own personal experiences, but I think you'd be
   >better off with slackware. I have gotten debian to install, but
   >it's a somewhat tricky process. I tried it recently, though, and it
   >wouldn't boot correctly on the upgraded machine. I kept getting the
   >message init: respawning too fast, disabled for five minutes. I
   >don't know what this means, but slackware does not seem to do this.
   >I've always been able to install slackware flawlessly and am
   >happily running it perfectly. The good side of debian, assuming you
   >get it to work, is the package manager. It handles packages very
   >nicely indeed, certainly better than rpm or any other packager.
   >dependencies are taken care of for you automatically, and you can
   >upgrade the whol thing through the net with two commands. However,
   >I've found slackware to be more convenient, especially it's init
   >structure. I find the system V init-style scripts used by debian
   >and red hat annoying. Slackware has about four scripts, which you
   >edit manually. Debian's number varies depending on how many
   >packages you install, and then you need to worry about symlinks. I
   >hate the runlevel directories, there's symlinks all over the place.
   >Six directories to manage instead of one. I know debian has
   >update-rc.d, but it has failed me before. Slackware also has System
   >V init capability in version 7.0 and later, which is useful if you
   >install some commercial software that expects this init style, but
   >the main init is through four scripts, sometimes five. What I find
   >most annoying about debian, however, is the fact that you can't
   >edit /etc/mailcap manually. It just gets overwritten. You need to
   >go in and create a file in /usr/lib/mime/packages containing the
   >lines and then run update-mime. However, you can't name the file
   >anything, it needs to be the name of an already installed package.
   >This does not apply to any other distribution I know of. Of course
   >the problem with this is that if that package wants to place its
   >own version of a file there, it will and if your options are set
   >wrong, will do this without warning you. You may get asked, or you
   >may not. It depends. Jacob
   >On Sat, 30 Sep 2000, Charles Hallenbeck wrote:
   >> Hi Jacob...
   >> I am torn between upgrading to a current Slackware or switching
   >>to Debian. I  have not talked to Dell yet so I do not know what
   >>what distro they have  built in. I am really tired of messing with
   >>kludgy hardware and a solid  platform would be nice for a change.
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Jacob -
Those are helpful observations. I have only used Slackware in the past -
2.0, 3.0, 3.5, and now 4.0, so I know its structure pretty well and may just
stick with it. It is the awkwardness of upgrading that tempts me to switch.
Chuck.