From: Chris R. <cro...@gc...> - 2010-01-27 20:26:50
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Chris Baker wrote: > I don't know what your level of expertise is. Please accept my apology if > you already know this. > > The two particular distributions you mentioned are pretty different. Debian > basically started as its own branch of distribtuion, and other distributions > like Ubuntu and Mepis are derived from it. CentOS is derivative of RedHat. > To clarify, CentOS is not just a derivative of RedHat, but a binary compatible clone, with different trademarks. > Most disributions come from one of these two branches. > Heh. If you don't count Suse, Mandriva, Slackware, Arch... Perhaps I'm just being argumentative. If so, I apologize. > For me, the top virtue of Debian is that it gives you a very basic install. > You get the command line and a few packages. Then, you have to add > everything else. What this means is that the latest version of Debian will > actually work pretty well on a machine that has only 512 MB of memory. > > Package managers are different on both. CentOS uses the RPM (Redhat Package > Manager), while Debian uses APT. I think APT works much better. Debian > definitely resolves dependencies much better than others. > CentOS uses YUM (Yellowdog Updater, Modified) for package management. Saying CentOS uses RPM is like saying Debian uses dpkg. While I would certainly agree that APT is a better package manager than RPM, I prefer YUM to APT. Your mileage may vary. > One other person mentioned Gentoo. It's got a very good reputation for being > lean and efficient. Gentoo users love Gentoo. The downside is that the > install compiles from source and take a long time. I don't have personal > experience with Gentoo. If you are an experienced Linux user, go ahead and > try Gentoo. If you are a beginning Linux user, I don't recommend it. > > More and more, it seems like trying on Linux distributions is like trying on > new suits. Some fit for some people, others fit for other people. > > Chris Baker -- cb...@in... > systems administrator > INTERA -- 512-425-2006 Chris |