Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com wrote:
[No, this isn't a troll, all you Debian fans!]
Ohhhhh yes it is! Not matter what the allegations of being obscure/oddly configured by default, not having 24/7 telephone support hotlines or not using "standard" (hah! v3/v4 split anyone?) RPMs, you can *NOT* be serious in accusing Debian of slow security responses. security.debian.org is normally right up there with the other good distributors and the automatic service is second to none!
The only case I can think of where there was any significant delay was due to the large number of platforms Debian runs on and the difficulty of getting the prposed fix to work cleanly on all of them. For a distributor not offering, say, mips, the fact it doesn't compile there isn't a problem to them, but Debian cares (see the Social Contract).
Now go look at a certain commercial distributor who just stopped providing security updates for months without giving a reason...
I looked at Debian, and I know there are a lot of supporters in here for it, but it's too far behind the curve for me. I want to be more up-to-date, and sometimes I need, for commercial reasons, new functionality immediately. Debian can be several months behind.
If you want to be within a few weeks of the current releases of packages, you can use "testing", which is a sort of rolling beta. If you want to be within a few hours of the current (in many cases), then you can use "unstable" and help find the bugs before they hit "testing" ;-)
If you just want the latest versions of a few selected packages, in most cases you can run "stable" and "backport" the later versions from testing or unstable. I've done this myself in the past and I think Brett is doing this at Paston with some success (is that right, Brett?).
Sure, Debian can be several *years* behind if you want (go grab the old "bo" release or something), but it's your choice. I think Debian is the distribution currently offering the richest choice of installation configurations (through "tasks", which would probably be the basis for different "editions" if Debians were boxed sets by default), platforms and stability-vs-currentness settings.
With the latest "netinst" images, you only have to download the bits you need, not multiple 650Mb images of mostly filler. When the next release is done (May is hoped, I hear), the installation should become a bit nicer still, I think.
OK, advert over, back to your normal programming. Yes, there will be Debian at the install days... anyone want a primer on it at the next meeting? ;-)