On Sun, Nov 06, 2005 at 01:41:29PM +0000, Matt Parker wrote:
Well apart from the fact that they are missing large amounts of software from their standard distribution. Admittedly this software is of the non-Free variety, but in the real world it is often necessary to use such software.
I can never use Debian due to the zealotry of it's developers in this regard.
Debian are largely concerned about producing a technically sound distribution that can be used by *anyone* for *anything* they choose. It's largely accepted that it's unfortunate this rules out certain bits of useful software (you mention Java later; there are efforts to produce Free implementations and java-package for easily producing a Debian style package of the non-free versions). However the advantage is that no matter who you are (use, developer, custom distro producer) you can pick up Debian main and just use it.
J.