The advantages of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution

The popular Linux distributions - the ones that people get to know first - are SuSE, Redhat, Mandrake, perhaps Turbolinux and so on. They are all, more or less, the same: They focus on user friendlyness, ease of installation, easy documentation, translations, and they sponsor quite a number of OSS projects.

But there are others: Gentoo, Slackware, Debian, for example. They have a different focus, they focus on long-term stability, ease of administration, intelligent pre-configuration and extensive documentation in one language (English most of the time).

And although the "popular" distributions have caught up in some of the terms, there is still nothing (IMHO) that can reach the package management and ease of upgrade in Debian or Gentoo. Here's what I think makes Debian - my favorite Linux distribution - special.

Pros:

• Developed just like Linux itself - by volunteers around the world. No company, no marketing plans or deadlines. It's released when it's finished.
• Stable, fast and small. Minimum installation is about 100MB. You get a fully functional intranet server (without data space) with web server, proxy, firewall, mail / news and shell access under 150MB. Debian installs only what is absolutely necessary, unless you explicitly tell it otherwise.
• NEVER, EVER, reinstall. The Debian upgrade system (APT, "Another Package Manager" :-) is just about the most brilliant thing in this universe. My server (installed first time 1994) has switched from a.out to ELF, from libc5 to glibc 2.0 to glibc 2.2, Perl 4 -> 5 -> 5.6 without EVER having my system screwed up so badly that Ineeded to reinstall. At least, not by the installation / upgrade process: I had a hard disk crash once (backups are good) :-)
  I know people who do an "apt-get upgrade" via cron job daily to snatch all the security upgrades automatically.
• More packages. (ATM, 9000 in the unstable tree if I'm correct) You have a choice between a dozen webservers and several mail servers. All pre-configured to be useable. Debian installs Apache and Exim by default but you can install any number of other mail servers.
• More detailed packaging. Perl is divided into a couple hundred packages and you get half of CPAN as debian packages. New (non-packaged) Perl packages go in /usr/local and don't mess up your /usr/lib/ directory.
• No package incompatbilities. Debian packages are Debian packages and the rules for getting one into the official "tree" are _very_ strict.
  E.g. /usr/local for a package is taboo, /usr for non-static data is taboo, and _all_ configuration is kept in /etc.
  That means e.g. that you can safely mount /usr read-only (or via NFS) and _NO_ Debian package will complain. If one does, it's a bug.
  That also means that you can e.g. safely install gcc 2.7.2 and gcc 2.95 *and* gcc 3.x at the same time and not worry about libary chaos or compilation incompatibilities.
• Oh, yes. *Persons* maintaining the packages, not "builddeamon@XXXXXX.com". You can actually ask the maintainer for missing features and they will respond. Try asking SuSE or Redhat to compile an additional module into Apache by default so you don't have to roll your own for your server.
• Working bug report system. Type "reportbug <packagename>" and the reporter collects dependancy information, versions, changed config files etc. and prompts you for an explanation and sends this off to the bug tracker and the developer('s mailing list). You will be kept up to date about your bug. (see http://bugs.debian.org)
  KDE used the same bug tracking system, BTW. :) (see http://bugs.kde.org)
• More intelligent package management. The Debian APT system has been figuring out and solving dependancies since 1997, and it _works_. Things like "cannot be installed because XXXX.rpm is not installed" are past. You can automagically upgrade the WHOLE SYSTEM via a ssh connection. Including all network packages: The SSH package detects if it is being upgraded over a SSH connection and doesn't kill itself during an upgrade. Examples on request.
• More intelligent pre-configuration. Install bind, and you've got a running leaf nameserver with working example configuration. All /etc files are well commented and not a "script generated" mess. No program refuses to run if you manually modify a config file (can anybody say "SuSEconfig"?). That's because one of Debian's rules is "Package X may not modify Package Y's files" - it must call a script from Y, ie. Y must provide a simple "API" (the script) so Y knows what is changeable and can care about it..
  That's why you can replace sysV-init with simple-init or file-rc and don't notice any change, except for the file structure change in /etc.
• Debian package generation from tar.gz sources is a SNAP. Even for newbies. (that is, if the source uses autoconf - which can be expected nowadays). RPM package generation is a LOT more difficult. And for RPM you need to be root - DEBs can be created without root access (using fakeroot) and without actually installing the package anywhere but into a temporary subdirectory.
  Unpack the sources, type 'deb-make && debuild -uc -us -b' and you're set.

Cons:

• Installation. It's so straight forward that it doesn't even begin to care about most of your hardware. Setting up sound, USB, Firewire etc. mostly means installing the (.deb) packages yourself and editing config files. X11 is however handled by an installer that asks you simple questions. The docs are there, however, and you get a running network and PCMCIA system during installation.
  Prepare to configure manually. But you will never need to do it again - and you will NEVER have to worry about some upgrade to destroy your configuration. (Unless you don't read what a package that is being upgraded prompts you.) :-)
• Debian developers are very strict about stability. This is an advantage, but means e.g. that usually the most recent Xfree86 version isn't in the stable tree. OTOH, Debian was the first to switch to ELF and the first to switch to glibc 2.0 and 2.1. And if you do get a package, it works.
  If you are daring, however, you can install from the "testing" tree which contains packages that were tagged "works for me" by the packager, stayed in "unstable" for 2 weeks without them getting a critical bugreport, and don't depend on other packages that do not qualify for testing. Then you're just as bleeding edge as you can safely get.
  "unstable", however is (at times) really unstable - e.g. in January 2000 a new bash package accidentally replaced /bin/sh with a (broken) symlink to itself. And you might want to read about the Perl 5.6 chaos in the list archives. But that's what "unstable" is for. If you read the debian mailing lists you can be totally up-to-date with all applications, and have a perfectly stable system, with Debian 'unstable'. (I know - I've been running unstable, plus XFree86 CVS, plus KDE CVS, for some months.)
• Debian's APT somewhat assumes that you have a (fast) net connection to the Debian FTP mirrors. Installing from CDROM is fine, works well, and upgrading also - but you don't really get all the benefits of the package management.
  
• The default package selection tool (dselect) is a PITA. Don't use it. Period. There are replacements (console-apt, gnome-apt, red-carpet) but they are still work in progress. There is no simple answer to "what package performs task X" yet - look at freshmeat or Debian's package index on the Web and type "apt-get install packagename".

My personal conclusion

My personal conclusion: Debian is to Linux distributions what Linux/UNIX is to operating systems.

It's "different". It's a tad difficult at times.

But it's worth it.