Debian & APT - Why I love it
Posted in Linux, Security on February 12, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I don’t want to say its the best, but I’ve been using Debian, Ubuntu and other APT based Linuxes for years now. Ubuntu on desktop PC’s and Debian on Servers (only because I have a few servers already on Debian and keeping all identical is worth doing). I don’t run GUI’s on my servers.
I pretty much use Debian in favour of other linuxes because it is free, and updates are also free. Debian stable is much like Redhat Enterprise, its stable, and only upgraded when necessary… and I also love the fact there is the “free” and “non free” package library - so if you build a PC using all “free” packages you know there will be zero licensing concerns. There are disadvantages however, which I’m sure avid readers will be happy to comment on…
Why do I personally use Debian on my home servers - the main answer is APT. Its amazingly handy to upgrade packages for security bugs & the entire OS can also be updated in this way if a newer version is up.
The fast paced Linux world often underestimates the needs of enterprises, and home users in that they don’t want to apply a patch every day for some estoric package they don’t even use/want to use. Patching should only simple, easy, non-intrusive, and just work (without reboot in most cases except for a kernel patch). APT ticks all of these needs.
Debian is also easy to install in a minimal fashion with only what you need, and is only updates installed package as would be expected.
An example is the major security hole Debian/Linux as had this weekend - to update I done the below:
- apt-get update
- apt-get upgrade
- apt-get install linux-image-2.6-686 (to update kernel)
- reboot
This one simple set of commands updated all the programs within my Debian install to latest release, and also replaced the bad kernel in the above bug.
The other thing I have done before is upgrade the entire OS to a newer “stable” release when Debian stop supporting the old version… this is really simple involving a one line edit of a system file, and the same commands as above (except with dist-upgrade instread of upgrade). You also only have to reboot in these circumstances if you upgrade the kernel.
This is why I love APT and Debian in particular.. it has been years since I’ve used other linuxes, and I understand Redhat is now on par. What is your favourite linux and why?
Rated: 100% (2 votes)
Loading ...Comment by lefty.crupps - February 13, 2008 on 12:00 am
Yes, apt is the reason to love Debian…. along with its preset (and nicely commented) config files, its style of installing modules etc via directory linkings, its ability to upgrade from one release to another…
Next time you run that set of commands, try:
> apt-get update
> apt-get dist-upgrade
This will update more of your system, since some apps require newer packages and a simple upgrade won’t pull those in automatically…
Comment by Felipe Contreras - February 13, 2008 on 5:21 pm
I don’t want to say x is better than y, I just want to complement the information.
In Fedora you can run “yum update” and then “y” to continue once you see the updates.
Including the fix CVE-2008-0600.
And it also comes with a completely free system. If you want non-free stuff, you’ll need to look for third party repos.
And there are a lot of differences, yes.
Comment by ComputerBob - February 14, 2008 on 2:04 pm
After looking for years for a Linux distro that could replace Windows 98/XP for my full-time use, I finally started using Kubuntu in July, 2006, followed quickly by SimplyMEPIS. Mepis held my hand and taught me enough about Linux that I was finally confident and knowledgable enough to install pure Debian this past December, and I’ve been using Debian full-time ever since. I love Debian’s balance of challenge and reward.
For anyone who’s interested in switching to Debian, I carefully documented my entire first Debian install and configuration experience in My Debian Adventure.
Comment by jones - February 15, 2008 on 3:52 am
except rpm doesnt work as well as APT
debian is both stable and recent enough
Comment by JS - February 15, 2008 on 12:54 pm
You have it the wrong way round.
APT is not a reason to love debian. Apt is available for many distros and there are other package managers which are just as good (although apt was better first!).
Debian is great because of it’s packaging - all of the people that put the effort into making sure that the myriad packages debian distribute work well together and are relatively bug-free.
Apt is a fine tool, but it becomes a great tool only when it is combined with the high-quality packaging work that the debian people do. Debian-based distributions gain from this work and many of these give substantial work back, enriching and enlarging the Debian universe as they do so, but it’s the huge amount of .deb packaging work that provides the base for them to build on.
Debian is the reason you love apt!
Comment by Stephan Beal - February 17, 2008 on 11:16 am
After starting out with Slackware in 1994, then being a devout Suse user for 6 or 8 years, i switched to the *buntu family of distros because they’re almost as easy to configure and (most importantly) the apt tools simply kick the living daylights out of any other package management tools i’ve seen. If the apt team will replace the back-end flat-file db with something else (e.g. sqlite3) to speed it up, it will be about as perfect as a piece of software can get.
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