debian vs redhat...

[karmic]

I've never used debian in my life, haven't had the chance as of yet... I like using redhat, and tho i'm still classed as a newbie, i'm loving it... I've played with other systems but it seems to me like redhat is the most user friendly.

A friend has a debian server in her office and the person that installed/supported it is no longer available... How different are these operating systems? And would it be easy to jump from one to another?

She hasn't had any problems with it in the past year since it went in but wants to know if I can take care of it for her if need be...

~ K.I.S.S - Don't make it any more complex than it has to be ~

 

[thedaver]

I "grew up" on RedHat. Then after being shamed by a friend who's an admin, I moved into Debian. Debian is not radically different from RedHat, except for a few areas (IMHO)...

-- Patch management is done on Deb using "apt-get", which rocks IF YOU DO EVERYTHING its way.
-- Libraries and locations of some common files are sometimes different. You will rarely be affected by this unless you are compiling your own apps or NOT using the package management from the prior point - which I advise against unless you really want to irk yourself.
-- You can package your own compilations of stuff like Openssh and Openssl. I haven't done this and have paid a penalty by not being able to use the package management because of broken dependencies. That's ok for me because I compile a lot of other stuff.
-- Debian uses the "least is best" mentality during installation. RedHat's defaults are a bit bloated, but the smarter you get with RedHat, you can prune down their install to a more managable size
-- Debian's installation requires some pretty close knowledge of your initial hardware setup. Initial Installation is probably the biggest departure from RedHat.

Overall, if I was hiring an administrator who wasn't comfortable with Debian, I'd ask some hard questions about the candidate's aptitude. But that's more of an editorial comment....

Try building a test box with Debian. You'll need an Internet connection to do it.

http://www.surfinbox.com/hosting/

 

[karmic]

thanks for the reply...

I think I will try the installation of debian... I've taken a little bit of heat over redhat already and I haven't been working with linux for very long...

Gotta say tho, the more I get into linux, the more I like it... Microsoft blows in alot of ways.

~ K.I.S.S - Don't make it any more complex than it has to be ~

 

[ericbrunson]

Ubuntu is a really nice debian distro that avoids the crappy installer issues. It's the first distro I've seen that has Gnome 2.8 by default.

Personally, I'm partial to Fedora. Core 2 is very stable and I'm very familiar with the environment and RPM.

 

[karmic]

yeah, I toyed with fedora and I like it... I would have used it on my last server install but it's not compatible with the promise tx2000 raid controller. Had to drop back to rh9.

Never heard of ubuntu, have to check it out.

thanks.

~ K.I.S.S - Don't make it any more complex than it has to be ~