On Fri, 2004-09-10 at 16:34, Ken Elliott wrote:
> Interesting. Could you explain further? I'm unclear on this, as
> to how it differs from, say, SuSE.
It all has to do with the packaging front-end.
A distribution may use DEB, RPM or something else as its packaging
back-end. But Debian has always been a superior distribution (IMHO) for
its APT packaging front-end.
Distributions that stick to a strict Debian-release will find little
difficulty in using any package for that Debian release. Distributions
that tend to modify a number of packages will not. From what I've seen
with Mepis, Debian is leveraged as much as it can be, with little
modification. Xandros (including Linspire) is forking off a bit,
although each release isstill tied to a specific Debian-base.
Most commercial distributions today were based on Red Hat at one point
-- Caldera (RHL4.0), Mandrake (RHL5.2), SuSE (RHL4.x-something?), etc...
but forked off into their own developments, and are no longer based on
Red Hat releases. Red Hat did not offer a community distribution model
like Debian has with APT at that time, so it was natural for vendors to
do their own 'thang anyway.
Of course, this has now changed with Red Hat's Fedora Project. Red Hat
still controls the release of Fedora "Core" (the direct replacement for
Red Hat Linux), and it still serves as the 100% base for their Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, like Red Hat Linux before it, but the Fedora Project
as a whole offers the same "community access" experience as Debian with
two caveats. One is that it is not nearly as mature yet (but I've been
impressed so far). Two is that Red Hat still makes the final decisions,
although the steering committee (still largely Red Hat) has a lot of
say.
And then there are Fedora Extras, Fedora Legacy (long story on that one,
see my FAQ) and 3rd Party repositories. Unlike Debian, Red Hat has
major liabilities including things like MP3, CSS, Flash, etc... on their
own. But major vendors like Macromedia offer an APT/YUM repository for
automatically updating Flash. This is independent of Red Hat, not on
the CDs, but integrated like it was, thanx to Red Hat's adoption of a
community distribution model (even RHEL UP2DATE supports APT/YUM).
Instead of people just forking off Red Hat Linux never to return, there
are now several distributions that are pulling from Fedora. It's up to
any vendor, community or commercial, how much they fork. But
distributions like Mepis (Debian), Cobind (Fedora) and far too many
others to track leverage the community distribution model of Debian and
Fedora repositories.
It will be interesting to see if Novell will follow suit soon. If they
do, then it will also be interesting how they will handle the trademark
issues that plagued Red Hat Linux because it was a 100% redistributable
release.
--
Linux Enthusiasts call me anti-Linux.
Windows Enthusisats call me anti-Microsoft.
They both must be correct because I have over a
decade of experience with both in mission critical
environments, resulting in a bigotry dedicated to
mitigating risk and focusing on technologies ...
not products or vendors
--------------------------------------------------
Bryan J. Smith, E.I. b.j.smith at ieee.org
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