So the only major distribution I’ve never used has actually been Debian,............
So I’ve used SuSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu,
I suppose Ubuntu ought to be proud, the've managed to get the great Linus Torvalds to call them a major distro. When in reality thier a Debian child.
I for one really don't care how hard it is to install. What counts to me is stability of use and maintance ease after instalation. You'd think a software programer would realize that you only install once in a while, but you use and maintain it daily.
Quite Frankly I was floored to read a statement like that from him. I guess I never really thought about his choice of distros. But after playing with LFS, I guess I would have guessed he would have something like that. No distro he listed is in my or my friends top 10 list.
Well SuSe might slip into the top 10, but the rest fall far short. In realilty I suppose with several hundred distros to choice from it's no wonder he's as confussed as the rest of us which is the best. Now I don't feel so bad about my confussion of choices.
Frankly, I wonder why dying companies don't release their proprietary code to open source. Instead they take it to the graveyard of ideas. Corel and Libranet come to mind.
I aggree 100%, Libranet taking the admin control panel to the grave was a real mind boggler. There was quit a few people offered to help keep Libranet alive, but they choose the grave yard instead. I was a Libranet user, but not any more.
it is strange that someone who created and maintains the linux kernel opts for the easiest distro.Makes you wish he would make it easier to read the kernel source Wink
Or maybe just make it easier to recomplie the kernel. if ease is one of his main concerns.
Personally, I like to go to the source of the matter, if I can find it. Again, personally I'm already a bit skewed by the OP and further skewed by the subsequent posts in this thread. Not that being skewed is a good thing or a bad thing. it just "is" another one of those things. That being said, I believe Linus has the right to say what he says to whom ever he wants to say it, about "whatever", especially if someone is asking his opinion.
Your right, he can say what he pleases, on the same note we can comment on what he says. Especially when what he says shocks us as something a newbie might say but not a linux guru.
Personally, I started with Debian. I didn't think that it was a difficult distro to install, but I had no experience with other distros. So I had nothing to really compare my Debian experience with.I have since tried Ubuntu, and there is no question that Ubuntu is much easier to install than Debian is. Even now.
I guess I don't speak well enough english to understand easy or easier. Because to me Ubuntu isn't easier, it just uses the gui install. Debian has a great gui install but, it's not the default, you have to use an F key to get it started.
One thing the debian installer does that no body but slackware does is let you have your choice of software to install, (desktop, server, whatever). All the others install and you have to weed out software you don't want, then add software you want afterwards.
That's not easy to me.
Debian is not easier to install than some other distros. It never has been.
I'm basicly lazy, and love easy street. And I have been using debian since Woody with ease.
I suppose someone will have to define "easy" to me. I looked it up in Wikipidea Dictionary and got this. (The term easy is used, typically in a pejorative sense, to refer to someone (usually, a woman) who is receptive to sexual advances (in the usual case, by a man).) So that hasn't helped me to understand statments like "Debian Installer isn't easy, and never has been".
If debian isn't easy, then why are there more minor distros based on debian than any others?