down for the count

[Kerry Hoath]

I won't respond to all points in the mail since I don't want to start a
distribution war all over again, surfice it to say; I'll agree to disagree
with most of your points.
Regarding the init respawning too fast, I assume you were trying to set up
a serial console? If this is the case and you forget
to load the serial module you'll get this behaviour.
On Sat, Sep 30, 2000 at 12:07:08PM -0400, Jacob Schmude wrote:
> 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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-- 
--
Kerry Hoath: kerry at gotss.eu.org
Alternates: kerry at emusys.com.au kerry at gotss.spice.net.au or khoath at lis.net.au
ICQ UIN: 62823451