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Debian GNU is Not Unix Java Programming

Debian Fastest-Growing Distro, Says Netcraft 516

Posted by timothy from the all-statistics-are-flawed-of-course dept.
Oskuro writes "According to this story at news.netcraft.com, Debian was the fastest growing distribution in the last 6 months, closely followed by SuSE and Gentoo. RedHat, while still reigning, has started to lose sites in Netcraft's survey after they announced the end of support for their desktop releases. The survey is based on the stats from webservers which include the distribution name in their webserver's header." Maybe it would grow even faster when Java issues are worked out -- read more below on that.

adamy writes "For people like me that use both Free/Open Source software and Java, the two have come together with two major exception: The Java Virtual Machine and the Base Libraries. Seems the folks trying to get Java packages ready for Sarge could have listed the issues. This is an interesting example of dependency tree pruning: Several packages are orphaned because they depend on Ant, which depends on Swing. Swing has been lower priority for the Classpath because most of the java pacakages are server side or lack a UI componenet."
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Debian Fastest-Growing Distro, Says Netcraft More

Debian Fastest-Growing Distro, Says Netcraft

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  • 75% servers without Distro name... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Erik_ ( 183203 ) * on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:20PM (#8116844)
    "Debian has been the fastest growing Linux distribution when measured by counting active sites which contain the name of a Linux distribution in the Apache Server header... A distribution name is present in a little over a quarter of Linux based Apache sites."

    To me it says that 75% of the Apache administrators on Linux boxes have tought about security.
    Sure, it's an Apache server, but do you really need to show which distribution you are using ?

    • Re:75% servers without Distro name... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Frymaster ( 171343 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:23PM (#8116884) Homepage Journal
      To me it says that 75% of the Apache administrators on Linux boxes have tought about security.

      to me, it says that a lot of mid-sized sites got burned with red hat's recent killing of rh9. when the option is either a) pony up $400 or b) move to this untested hobby distro (fedora) that requires a complete re-install anyway, people start looking at other distros.

      so, yeah, i'll be migrating our twelve servers from red hat to suse sometime in the next month or so.

      • How is SuSE better? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ink ( 4325 ) * on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:28PM (#8116963) Homepage
        They charge the same ammount?

        We were debating the Progeny support system ourselves. We're going to stick with Freshrpm for a while to see if that fills the need (we can even contribute RPMs back in. We looked at SuSE, but it seemed to have the same problems that Redhat has.

      • Re:75% servers without Distro name... (Score:4, Informative)

        by chill ( 34294 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:30PM (#8117009) Journal
        to me, it says that a lot of mid-sized sites got burned with red hat's recent killing of rh9. when the option is either a) pony up $400 or b) move to this untested hobby distro (fedora) that requires a complete re-install anyway, people start looking at other distros.

        Upgrades are half price -- $174.50 for ES, which isn't that bad if you need the support and RHN.

        Or go look at Progeny, who is not only providing "transition" support for RH 7, 8 & 9 users but was also just awarded LSB certification.

      • Re:75% servers without Distro name... (Score:4, Informative)

        by LynXmaN ( 4317 ) * on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:35PM (#8117082) Homepage
        this untested hobby distro (fedora) that requires a complete re-install anyway

        That's quite a trolling from your part.

        I have installed Fedora on my RedHat 7.3 machines using apt-get (for rpm) and only in 1 reboot, so it doesn't require a full reinstallation.

        And also Fedora is the evolution from RedHat 9, even if it have bugs (as all distros) it's stable and ready for production.

        • Re:75% servers without Distro name... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ComputerSlicer23 ( 516509 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @06:18PM (#8117712)
          Nope, not ready for production. For two reasons, that have nothing to do with it's stability while running:

          First, it has 6 month support cycles. You have problems, after the first 6 months, don't expect the Fedora Core people to be obliged to help you.

          Second, the standard security fix policy is: upgrade to the latest package, never backport the fix to the released package.

          It's more work then it's worth to upgrade machines every 6 months. It's worth me personally paying the $400 a machine to get the extra sleep I'll get from not having to work all the OT to test the upgrades.

          Second, I want a security fix that is a complete drop in replacement, barring incredible circumstances (or me doing something that was completely bone headed), it should never break.

          Kirby

        • Re:75% servers without Distro name... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Mr. Frilly ( 6570 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @06:20PM (#8117758)

          And I upgraded a Redhat 8.0 machine to Fedora Core 1 from 500 miles away with one reboot.

          I am seriously considering Debian for future servers though. Fedora has been stable, but I'd like to have something on the server that doesn't need to be upgraded every 6 months.

      • Re:75% servers without Distro name... (Score:4, Informative)

        by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:43PM (#8117196) Homepage
        [...] or b) move to this untested hobby distro (fedora) that requires a complete re-install anyway, people start looking at other distros.

        I'm going to have to call FUD on this. Why would installing Fedora Core require a complete re-install? Doing an upgrade from Red Hat Linux 9 works fine.

        For that matter, what's untested about it? Red Hat has to take some of the blame for this confusion, but in actuality, Fedora Core has gotten just as much pre-relese testing as previous consumer-level Red Hat distributions -- probably more, with the more-open development model.

        It's also not *really* a hobby distro, any more than Debian is.

        so, yeah, i'll be migrating our twelve servers from red hat to suse sometime in the next month or so.

        Now *that* will take a complete reinstall. SuSE is a great distro so there's nothing wrong with that, but I suggest you take a second look at Fedora first.

        • Re:75% servers without Distro name... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ComputerSlicer23 ( 516509 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @06:29PM (#8117870)
          It's also not *really* a hobby distro, any more than Debian is.

          I take exception to that point. Debian has a very, very long history of doing two things:

          1. Debian Stable is a long standing distro with support best measured in multiple years. Fedora Core says 6 months of support.

          2. Debian always backports security fixes to the stable. Fedora Core's policy is explicity to upgrade to the latest packages (even if that means your config files are now broken, and the API/ABI is incompatible so plugins).

          I know that Debian at one point had a very abrupt EOL notice (on the order of a month or two), when they transitioned from one stable to another. Which would be really annoying, but if it only happened every 2-3 years, I'd deal with it.

          I'm not much of a Debian user. In fact, I've never used it, other then a Knoppix live distro.

          I can't honestly recommend to anyone I know to use Fedora on any machine but one they use at home. That having upgrade problems and downtime is acceptable. Fedora Core's development model is very, very unfriendly to deploying in a production environment, especially if it's any place where security is a concern. I suppoes I could use it someplace where I didn't have a net connection, but I don't know of too many machines that don't have a net connection.

          Kirby

          • Fedora Core says 6 months of support.
            [...]
            Fedora Core's policy is explicity to upgrade to the latest packages.

            Take a peek at Fedora Legacy [fedoralegacy.org]. This addresses your first concern directly. And, although I haven't heard anything of it, if it turns out that Fedora Core's updates policy is too disruptive, I wouldn't be surprised if Fedora Legacy picks up the slack there. (In the meantime, there isn't really any indication that the updates policy will be as disruptive as threatened. Time will tell.)

            • Re:75% servers without Distro name... (Score:4, Insightful)

              by ComputerSlicer23 ( 516509 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @08:10PM (#8119004)
              I've seen Fedora Legacy. It's nice and all, but until it has some kind of track record that doesn't count as "production ready" to me. It could be wonderful, but I highly doubt it will stand up to Debian in terms of long term highly stable distributions. I don't like Debian, and I don't use it.

              I've got serious concerns about their ability to support the sheer number (4 of Core releases, probably for 3-6 platforms for each release once it gets going) of distro's that Fedora Core is putting out over a two year period. It's part of the reason that RedHat gave up RedHat Linux, it's the reason they had the EOL policies they did. It was too many distro's to support.

              I'm a lot more likely to follow White Box Linux (or any of the other RHEL rebuilds) then I ever would be to follow Fedora Core for a production server. I'm a lot more comfortable with building and signing my own binary packages from a RedHat SRPM when a security fix needs to happen then dealing with the fallout of upgrading packages.

              Fedora Core made a decision, and the doc's I'd read made it clear to me they understood the repercusions of not backporting a fix. They deliniated them, and then said: "This is a cutting edge platform, if you want stability, use RHEL". Some of that is RedHat's sales pitch. However, I've read the documentation, if they do what they set out in their plan, I'll happily pass. I won't even bother using it at home. It really is run like it is for a home distro. Just like I wouldn't run Debian Unstable/Testing on production machines, even though I know they are pretty reliable, I'm still not doing it.

              There's a reason that Debian only has one "Stable" (yes it's for 9 platforms), supporting multiples of them is time consuming. Also if they supported 3 of them, it go back to 2.0 kernel series if I remeber correctly.

              Kirby

          • Re:75% servers without Distro name... (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Pros_n_Cons ( 535669 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @12:12AM (#8120553)
            So not only is is Fedora unstable with a horrid development model but its especially bad if you care about security?

            1.) I've never had a fedora crash (except when I tried to install 2.6 kernel
            2.) it has exec-shield stack protection enabled by default but its less secure than your precious debian who got owned last month right? if they used exec-shiled that brk() exploit would have failed (yes i know debian will have it soon, thank ingo who works at redhat for that).

            I'll never run Debian not cause of its quality but because of its childish group of users who piss me off with blind zealotry. Now that I've vented I want to pose a question. Would you rather pay $0 and have a distro. or have people pay $174 to a company that pays people around the clock to:
            maintain GTK+
            wrote/maintain orbit
            Anaconda (which has been ported to debian and others)
            freedesktop.org
            Kudzu (did knoppix thank them?)
            rpm
            gcc
            glibc
            exec-shield
            selinux
            X/x.org
            open nvidia drivers
            opens GPL software from propritairy companys they buy out. (see selestia)
            notice a trend here or shall I continue? I'm not just using an OS today, I'm investing in OSS.

            • Re:75% servers without Distro name... (Score:4, Insightful)

              by ComputerSlicer23 ( 516509 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @03:44AM (#8121561)
              I'm not sure if you are ranting at me and being a Debian zealot. I steer people away from Debian. I bleed RedHat blue so to speak. I saw the light somewhere around RedHat 5.2 or so. Never looked back. I'll read RedHat for everything. I own every copy of RedHat as a boxed set since 5.2 or so. I've even got a copy of the the Professional desktop that is sold via retail chain stores. I'm a rah, rah RedHat guy. Got it! I can be a zealot for RedHat at points, but never ever for Debian.

              You are failing to connect the dots... That sentence in the grandparent where I said: "I've never used debian, except for a Knoppix CD" (I've booted Knoppix precisely twice to check the two security based knoppix ISO's). Which portion of that sentence didn't you understand. I'll gladly diagram it for you. Not that I've gone and personally attacked you, you can respond to that being a strawman. At least then you'll have a leg to stand on.

              I'm not a Debian Bigot. I'm not a Fedora critic either. I've never actually run Fedora (I've followed the mailing lists, and answered questions about it, but never actually installed it, even though I have a local mirror of it at home).

              Fedora has specific policies that run directly counter to the concept of "production quality, enterprise ready" in my humble opinion. Debian has qualities that jump up and down and scream: "Production Quality, enterprise ready".

              Now, Fedora might well move away from the original intents that RedHat laid down for them. Fedora is in fact a "bleeding edge" distro. It's designed to be that way, and stay that way, if they hold true to the core believes laid out at the Fedora website. Which leads me to the conclusion, that "Fedora is no more hobbist the Debian" to be intellectually dishonest. Which is what my post explained. Fedora core is designed to be a moving target to push that distribution far ahead. If you don't want to play ball, you'll fall behind, and Fedora won't come back and help you. Fedora Legacy might, but I want to see their track record before I start saying nice things about them.

              RedHat has done lots of good for the OSS community. It's why I own all their recent products. It's why we run RHEL at my office (because I insisted we purchase it). However, that does not make all things RedHat infalliable. If you want to go see a nice bit of zealotry, try reading your own post. I've been nice and polite (barring the first couple of paragraphs of this post).

              I never said Fedora isn't stable. I never said Fedora isn't secure. What I said is that Fedora isn't "production ready", because on an ongoing basis, it is the projects policy to do things that are fundamentally counter to ensuring that upgrading your system for security updates will never break the system. I said that Fedora has a written policy to not support systems for long enough for me to be comfortable deploying them for production use. I don't like distro upgrades. I do new installs and migrate services.

              RedHat carefully designed Fedora specifically so it can't ever be depended upon for sane production use. They took all that best qualities of "RedHat Linux" and added fixed all the things that drove people nuts about it, and called that "RHEL". They took all the parts that are leftover, and turned them into "Fedora Core". Fedora makes a number of problems that people complained about "RedHat Linux", and made them worse.

              People used to complain, RedHat had too many releases too often, so it is hard to stay current. Fedora Core makes this problem worse.

              People used to complain RedHat doesn't support their products for long enough. Fedora made this worse.

              RedHat at least used to guarantee binary compatibility of security fixes. Fedora Core doesn't.

              The reasons people used to think that "RedHat Linux" wasn't good for production use got worse via Fedora Core, not better. Fedora Core's fundamental operation princepal appears to be "upgrade to the lastest greatest stuff, and we will fix it". Y

    • To me it says that 75% of the Apache administrators on Linux boxes have thought about security. Sure, it's an Apache server, but do you really need to show which distribution you are using ?

      Hey man, it beats the ever loving shit out of running any version IIS on any version of Windows.

  • The debian-java mailing list.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by tcopeland ( 32225 ) * <tom AT thomasleecopeland DOT com> on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:22PM (#8116867) Homepage
    ...is right here [debian.org].

    Lots of discussions on library dependencies and Kaffe and such like are in the January archives [debian.org].

  • How is Java relevant here? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Eric Smith ( 4379 ) * on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:22PM (#8116868) Homepage Journal
    What do Java, Ant, and Swing have to do with surveying which Linux distribution is run by web servers? I'm baffled.

    • Re:How is Java relevant here? (Score:5, Informative)

      by rimu guy ( 665008 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @06:04PM (#8117487) Homepage

      The above poster is right. People want to run Java servers on their Linux boxes.

      But the fact that Debian currently has some issues with installing those automatically shouldn't hold things back. Certainly, Red Hat aren't going out of their way to support Java.

      And as far as Ant goes, it's not that hard to install:

      antversion=1.6.0
      {
      cd /usr/local
      wget -O - "http://apache.inspire.net.nz/ant/binaries/apache- ant-$antversion-bin.tar.gz" | tar xz
      ln -sf /usr/local/apache-ant-$antversion /usr/local/apache-ant
      echo "export ANT_HOME=/usr/local/apache-ant
      export PATH=\$PATH:/usr/local/apache-ant/bin" > /etc/profile.d/ant.sh
      chmod +x /etc/profile.d/ant.sh
      }

      FWIW, I run Linux Virtual Private Servers [rimuhosting.com] with a bunch of Java hosting tools like Tomcat [rimuhosting.com] preinstalled on my distros.

      And, at least for me, Red Hat (including Fedora) is still outselling Debian by 5.3 to 1. Maybe it's because I install apt-rpm on the Red Hat boxes to make them just as easy to manage as the Debian ones :)

  • I seem to remember predicting... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:23PM (#8116881) Journal
    Debian would be the one. It has the ring of solidity that characterises a lot of open-source stuff. For people actually *using* Linux rather than playing with it, reliability's a big issue.

    I'm not saying the others are unreliable, I'm saying that the perception is that Debian is more true-to-the-roots, and therefore more favourable. Perception is all - a statement that can mean two distinct things, and be simultaneously correct :-)

    Simon

    • Re: I seem to remember predicting... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:26PM (#8116923)


      > Debian would be the one. It has the ring of solidity

      Been to the movies lately?

    • Re:I seem to remember predicting... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mr. Piddle ( 567882 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @06:13PM (#8117632)
      Debian would be the one.

      So far, among Linux distributions, I've found Debian to have a lot of the flexibility and sensibility of Slackware and the breadth of Red Hat, without being as spartan as Slackware and not as retarded as Red Hat. I used to use Red Hat a lot for home/school, but it just didn't scale with me as I grew older (their installer and RPM-basis got more and more rigid and inflexible relative to my needs until I just got fed up with it). At this point in time, I'd have to say that Debian is the best all-around distribution.

  • Debian's not like it used to be. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mateito ( 746185 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:23PM (#8116889) Homepage

    I'm absolutely in agreement.

    These days you need a couple of CDs for Debian.

    When I was a lad we used to fit a full Debian distribution on one side of an 8" floppy disk.

    • Re:Debian's not like it used to be. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Erick the Red ( 684990 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:27PM (#8116947)
      When I was a lad, it only took one side of a loose leaf paper to fit in all the ones and zeros.
    • You need "a couple of CDs" where "a couple" means "ten to twelve".

      Potato came on 3, woody came on 5 (IIRC). Sarge adds openoffice.org and a bunch of smaller stuff.

      By the way, when I was a lad, we used to fit a full Debian distribution onto on side of an old Bee Gees cassette. And we didn't have modems, so we would have to use Morse code drivers to encode all of our network traffic! Of course, this was before Marconi, so we would then chisel the morse-encoded data into big stone slabs, throw them into the
    • These days you need a couple of CDs for Debian.

      Scuse me, but the last release is 8.5 cd's worth. A couple of cd's will get you going, but theres a lot more than just getting going IMO.

      Cheers, Gene
      There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order.
      -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
      99.22% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
      Yahoo.com attornies please note, additions to this message
      by Gene Heskett are:
      Copyright 2004 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, a

  • Knoppix hd installs contribution? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by planckscale ( 579258 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:25PM (#8116909) Journal
    The growth may be attributed to the ease of installing Debian from a Knoppix hard drive install script. I certainly have found it the easiest and fastest way to install a linux distro - and now with klik, installing applications onto knoppix has been made easier as well.

    • Re:Knoppix hd installs contribution? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Espectr0 ( 577637 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:28PM (#8116968) Journal
      The growth may be attributed to the ease of installing Debian from a Knoppix

      Oh come on, like somebody would install a debian unstable distro from a live cd to get their webserving done. Knoppix hasn't got anything to do with the increase
    • Do you have any resources that help turn the knoppix install into a real install?

      I had Knoppix and used both of the methods that were recommended (there was a newer one that was supposedly better that I tried, when it didn't work I tried the older method).

      It booted off the hard drive just fine, but ran exactly like Knoppix on a CD. I need to use normal users, and not auto log in, and all that jazz - and I couldn't figure out how...

      I am using Fedora Core 1 right now, but I liked Knoppix.

      This was about t

    • Re:Knoppix hd installs contribution? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ziviyr ( 95582 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @06:54PM (#8118215) Homepage
      You can do a PROPER install of Debian with the MEPIS live CD.

      http://www.mepis.org/
      • You can do a PROPER install of Debian with the MEPIS live CD.

        This isn't a troll, I'm genuinely wondering: why do people keep saying this on Slashdot? I've done a few HD installs of Knoppix, and it sure as heck looks like Debian to me. I think the word "Knoppix" comes up a few times when booting, but that's about it. apt-get and everything else I hear that's good about Debian is right there waiting to be used.

        What makes a "proper" Debian installation? Are there things I'm missing? One other question, too:

  • This is how we celebrate (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mr. Darl McBride ( 704524 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:26PM (#8116914)
    I am going to apt-get loaded tonight.

    ~Darl

  • Not suprised (Score:5, Informative)

    by TheRealMindChild ( 743925 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:26PM (#8116915) Homepage Journal
    Not suprised one bit. Both Debian and Gentoo are the only two usable UP TO DATE distro's that will run on a sparcstation. They obviously care to encompass EVERYONE who might use their OS, and gladly, Ill join that line.
    • No, SuSE has sparc port which is fully supported. Debian has a reputation of being BEHIND in library support etc. For years. They're just now improving it. And that is WHY Debian lost so much market share with Linux users starting in 1997 or so.

      Who the hell is running anything on sparc these days? It's hardly worth the trouble. x386 hardware is better, faster, cheaper. Using "runs on sparc" as a yardstick to measure a Linux distribution's quality is just ... off the point.

  • Free Market, baby! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:26PM (#8116931) Homepage Journal

    This illustrates perfectly how the free-market can work without overbearing monopolistic influence: Red Hat ends support for certain software, users can (and apparently do) go elsewhere.

    Cutting support in a proprietary environment means a forced upgrade or outright migration which would cost a bundle. In the free software world this could just be a lateral shift, nothing more than a speed bump.

    Consider this: in the very odd chance SCO wins lawsuits and Linux crumbles there wouldn't be much involved to move Linux web servers over to *BSD as they're likely all running Apache/PHP/*SQL anyhow.

  • inserting shameless UserLinux Plug... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:28PM (#8116967)
    I think we might have some cause in that.. The UserLinux team is working hard to improve elements of debian and try to organize everything.. And we still need a lot of help IMO... SUPPORT USER LINUX!

  • Debian just works. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by refactored ( 260886 ) <cyent.xnet@co@nz> on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:29PM (#8116978) Homepage Journal
    "aptitude" every now and then goes off and upgrades lots and lots, and I think, "Oh shit, this has got to break".

    And it doesn't.

    It just goes on and on, never crashing, never getting it's knickers in a knot. Just an endless stream of prime software, at my finger tips, or at the beck of a quick apt-get. And the upgrades and patches, just happpen. The dependencies? It all just sort's itself out.

    I've been in this business for a very long time, and every time I look at the list of things that "aptitude" is going to upgrade today I chuckle and say, it going to break now.

    And it just doesn't!

    And I'm not even on the "stable" distribution!

  • The best way to celebrate (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mr. Darl McBride ( 704524 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:29PM (#8116988)
    Stay with me on this...

    Debian is more than just Linux. It is possible to use The HURD as your kernel, for Debian/HURD, and similarly, Debian/NetBSD, Debian/OSX, and Debian/FreeBSD efforts are under way. I believe there is even a Debian/Cygwin port in usable shape, although I haven't heard of progress on development in a while.

    Now that you can find cheap SCOWare license packs up and down ebay, ubid, Silcon Auctions and the likes, perhaps it's time to take Debian in a new direction.

    May I be the first to propose:

    Debian/SCO?

    I await your comments.

    ~Darl

  • Slackware? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by maxphunk ( 222449 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:30PM (#8117001) Journal
    So what about Slackware (among others)? IMHO this survey is biased towards a few major distros.

    • Re:Slackware? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cyb97 ( 520582 ) * <cyb97@noxtension.com> on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:48PM (#8117263) Homepage Journal
      This survey kind-of depends on distros putting their name visible in the apache version string, something slackware doesn't.
      I for one manage a couple of slackware servers, some of them running apache with public reachable sites.

      However slackware, is to put it in slashdot-terms, dying. I still love it because of the ease of use and how easy it is to mold into what you want it to be. I even managed to convice the phb at my previous employment to commit to slackware instead of more "commercial" and buzzword distros like redhat et al.

      Unless swaret or other apt-ish application turns into a huge thing, I guess slackware will remain a distro for people with special needs. It's just not simple enough anymore to go out and look for packages or even compiling your self when all you friends are typing "apt-get install blah" and that sorts everything out.

      With signed-debs the security argument doesn't really hold anymore, and gentoo (with other deficits) provides pretty much custom-compiled applications the custom-compiled argument doesn't hold anymore.

      It's finally a matter of taste rather than functionality.
      • Why is Slackware "dying?" It's stil number 7 on Distrowatch, which isn't half bad considering that the most recent version of Slackware was released in September. It doesn't need crap like RPM updates every day, and Patrick knows that. If we actually want desktop and library updates that don't interfere with the distro, there is always Dropline, which takes care of most major needs between Slackware's 6-month upgrade cycles. And, if Slackware's upgrades are a problem, you can always keep "current" with

      • Re:Slackware? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by spaceyhackerlady ( 462530 )

        I guess slackware will remain a distro for people with special needs.

        Interesting. I've always used Slackware on my home systems, and am helping my employers work out the details of using Linux for new products, based on high-availability clusters and such. They like the stability and performance, and they like the congenial development environment, which leverages our current Sun-based experience. They really like the price.

        At first RedHat looked like a no-brainer (I'm typing this on a heavily patched

  • Redhat has more users than the rest combined. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by killmeplease ( 50275 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:30PM (#8117003) Homepage
    If you look at the numbers on the Netcraft report

    A) Redhat has more installations than all the other Distros combined

    B) Growth of Redhat is greater than all the other distros combined. Of course the percentage is slightly less than the others.
  • the logo still looks like "SuSE", but that's cos the chameleon's sitting on it.

    all the text is SUSE, so get with the program!

  • Unified libraries (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As a Linux developer, one main annoyance is the difficulty to build binaries that work on every system. With Windows, if I compile something and make sure that the end system has the proper MS runtime library for for C++/C, and it should work. The installation requirements can be a few standard packages. If directx is needed, it can simply require this simple to install package. However, with Linux, there is no unified set of libraries. A complex application may require the proper version of 30 librari

  • So what? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by CGP314 ( 672613 )
    It's easy to be the fastest growing when you have a tiny market share.

    --
    In London? Need a Physics Tutor? [colingregorypalmer.net]

    American Weblog in London [colingregorypalmer.net]

    • Re:So what? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jason Earl ( 1894 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:44PM (#8117208) Homepage Journal

      Yes, but Debian was already in third place behind Red Hat and Cobalt. It was ahead of SuSE, Mandrake, and Gentoo to begin with. It will almost certainly pass up Cobalt in the next six months (Cobalt has a negative growth rate and Debian is right behind). Of course, Red Hat has more market share than everyone else combined, and they also have a very strong growth rate (17.8%). They actually added more hosts than anyone else, although Debian was fairly close.

    • and it's also easy to make stupid comments if you don't even bother loading up the article..

      the following turns probably to garble, but anyways:

      Distribution July 2003 January 2004 Growth Rate
      Debian 355,469 442,752 24.6%
      SuSE 240,411 296,217 23.2%
      Gentoo 20,273 24,229 19.5%
      RedHat 1,231,986 1,451,505 17.8%
      Mandrake 51,299 52,543 2.4%
      Cobalt 553,012 548,963 -0.7%

  • I find recent versions of Suse, Mandrake, and Redhat to be alot more flakey and buggy then their 5.x and 6.x pasts from years ago.

    I switched to FreeBSD for this reason.

    A distro today is getting more and more complex and not all the api's for many programs are well tested so bugs get passed on.

    Some programs like Gnome have improved tremendously but I do notice alot more apps core dumping out of the box without an update then 3 years ago.

    Debian like FreeBSD is stable and the developers do not have the pre


    • > I find recent versions of Suse, Mandrake, and Redhat to be alot more flakey and buggy then their 5.x and 6.x pasts from years ago.

      Yes, even apart from issues of continuing bugfixes, I'm thoroughly disgusted with Red Hat 9.

      Among other things, they have been progressively replacing the boring but reliable old applications with a new generation of slick but buggy stuff. I certainly don't mind innovation, but keep the old stuff until the replacements are reliable.

  • See what happens when you leave apt-get update all running overnight?

    Back to being serious, I love Debian (I use Fink on my PowerBook) but for the life of me I have NEVER EVER NOT ONCE gotten it to install on my desktop without some serious hacking. I just can't get it to install out of the box...or not the box, as it stands, and I'm not running some odd hardware config. RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, easy. Debian? "Please get a MS in Comp. Sci and try again."

    Once it is installed, Debian is the best. Hands
    • Knoppix, Phlak and Morphix are all based on debian and have decent graphical installers. Even Libranet does Debian justice.

      And which distro lets you play solitaire during your debian install? That one is cool also. Debian itself needs to get with the times and roll in a good looking/easy installer.
    • Have you tried the new installer? The old boot-floppies has been totally replaced for sarge, and the new installer is shaping up pretty well. It's still not pretty (yet, although people want a gtk frontend, no one has really stepped up to do the work on it) but it's got hardware autodetection, a lot less questions to ask, grub as the default bootloader, and a whole bunch of other goodies that are on the way. We've gotten tons of positive feedback on it so far, so please give it a go!

  • SCO endorses Debian (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mr. Darl McBride ( 704524 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:37PM (#8117109)
    The phenomenal success of Debian is largely attributed to its many developers and maintainers, nearly a thousand in the US alone. All operating under the Debian social contract, the bureaucracy is thick, however the quality results speak for themselves.

    But the more powerful driving factor behind Debian's recent growth is its having become the first Linux distribution to partner with SCO. In an industry shaking maneuver, Bruce Perens has brokered a deal between SCO and the Debian team, in which Debian has agreed to share 15% of net revenue in exchange for full idemnification for any and all use or misuse of SCO's intellectual property.

    As soon as the ink has dried on the mutually signed contract, SCO will be in receipt of Debian's financial statements. This 15% of Debian's commercial revenue will surely mean a powerful boost for SCO's next fiscal quarter. The Boies back home will be proud.

    ~Darl

  • I chose Debian (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RedHat Rocky ( 94208 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:41PM (#8117163)
    I've been a long time Redhat user, both on the server AND desktop (yeah, that's right, desktop).

    After Redhat's new policy on Redhat Linux was announced, I knew I had to switch. Why? Redhat had made it clear it didn't want me as a customer.

    I need patches and that's it, I don't need hand holding and I don't need a 5 year plan (if that really turns out to hold). I'd gladly pay for patches, but the Enterprise options are why too expensive both for my current workplace and me personally. Fedora sounds like a good idea, looks good for messing around. But serious server work? No thanks.

    I read you load and clear Redhat, so I'm moving on.

    I looked at all the distros and kicked the tires. Gentoo is promising, but not mature enough (portage needs some work and not just technical). Slackware, well, I started with Slackware and I just can't go back. Debian (stable mind you) takes a little getting used to, but it's heart is in the right place and I look forward to being a contributing member of the community.

    • Re:I chose Debian (Score:4, Interesting)

      by read-only ( 35561 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @06:28PM (#8117854)
      I am in the same situation.

      I've been and Linux user since 1993, and most of that time was spent using Redhat. When Redhat recently spun-off Fedora, I thought it might be time to give other distros a chance.

      I tried Debian. I had many problems. I did become quite comfortable with the installer, but despite my repeated attempts to install and configure X and a few other key things I needed, I was never successul. I think Debian has some very attractive parts to it (apt, for one), but in the end I abandoned it. I eventually went with FreeBSD and am very happy with it.

      This leads me to my question. It seems this report suggests that Debian is the fastest growing *Linux* distro. But how does it compare to the growth of FreeBSD? Seems to me like FreeBSD is growing rapidly, perhaps more rapidly that Debian or any Linux distro. Seems to me like many hard-core *nix users are moving to FreeBSD. I could very well be wrong, but I'd love to know how FreeBSD compares to (in terms of growth).

  • Debian, like many good tools (vi), can be hard for beginners. It has a lot of new commands to remember like apt-get, apt-cache and dpkg. It has "the debian way" of doing things, which newbies often tangle with before learning. It doesn't have an X based installer, etc.

    The key is that once you do spend some time and learn it, the payoff is huge. Debian is a lot eaisier to run then most distros. When managing a lot of servers, you can do it more reliably and with less time using Debian over something else,

  • I had installed Redhat 9 perfectly with oracle and everything else. Then came next day the sudden slashdot news of redhat dropping support for regular linux in full support for advanced servers. Turning redhat to fecesdora.

    I am now debating debian since it seems to have a real community behind it. But what if debian pulls a redhat. What's stopping them from turning into another greedy anti-free distro.
  • First tier vendors to start supporting Debian again. HP used to, but hasn't for some time (pre-Compaq merger, back when Bruce Perens worked with them).

  • What about lesbian linux though (Score:4, Funny)

    by MajorDick ( 735308 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:54PM (#8117353)
    I was surfing along or maybe I was on IRC anyhow something pointed me to this Its a SPOOF on Debian. [lesbian.mine.nu]

    My favorite is apt-get install finger :)

  • Mandrake (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:57PM (#8117402)
    Wow, Mandrake's low scores really surprised me. I've been using it for quite a while, and find it to be the best there is for the desktop. It's sitting there right above Gentoo, and with gentoo's current growth, will probably be at the bottom in about a year.

    I think mandrake has one of the best desktop distros around. I had some friends who installed fedora a few weeks back. They just made it a little too un-linux for me. Mandrake still maintains that linux feel, without making everything a bitch to use.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @05:59PM (#8117423)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The reason is simple.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by msimm ( 580077 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @06:12PM (#8117613) Homepage
    Netcraft rates servers. Debian is being lauded as a replacement for Red Hat servers aggressively (like Server Beach did while I was with them). Debain stable is a good replacement on the server, so expect these numbers to continue to climb a bit (the whole Red Hat thing probably shook up a lot of people and left a big opening for a wholly OSS, stable solution).

    I've seen a few posts mentioning their favorite distro scoring suspiciously low, but remember: Mandrake [yours here] is a distro mainly targeted at the desktop, not the server.

  • Tried them all, settled on Debian (Score:5, Informative)

    by pjack76 ( 682382 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @06:25PM (#8117814)
    In the past year I've installed Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, Gentoo and Debian on my desktop and laptop. My friends think I'm crazy, but I was mostly going through the distributions to evaluate them for work.

    None of the commercial vendors impressed me with their technical support, which is funny since I paid them for it. Red Hat of course dropped support for their desktop distribution altogether.

    Both gentoo and Debian, in my experience, have extremely friendly communities who are willing to answer even my worst inane questions ("How can I get video1394 to load automatically on boot?")

    I ran gentoo for probably six months, but the cost of compiling everything once a week to keep up-to-date just wore me down, especially on the laptop. I know it has binary packages, but not for everything, and anyway I was all proud of myself for having optimized binaries for AMD...

    Well, no more. Now I'm on Debian and I'll probably stay there. It has the best "everything just works" rating out of all of them, even the commercial distros. Well, it has the best rating after you've installed discover. (And why doesn't discover load video1394 when it sees my firewire cable? It seems to know to load raw1394...)

    My only complaint is that there needs to be kernel-image packages that have ACPI compiled in.

    I'm impressed enough with Debian that I intend to install it on 50 desktops at work, if only I can convince management of the benefits of doing so. (Especially with Fully Automated Installation, woo hoo.)

  • AWT, Swing, and Ant (Score:3, Interesting)

    by adamy ( 78406 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:13PM (#8118419) Homepage Journal
    It is interesting that Timothy posted my submission underneath the one about which distros are most used. While they are related topics, I think they should have been posted separately.

    I submitted this article to be posted under developers.

    There have been several comments about Swing in Ant. Yes the Sun JDK comes with Swing. But Debian cannot redistribute the Sun JDK due to Suns licensing.
    The Debian goal is to come up with a complete set of Java tools that are available under the oipen source license. While there are several compilers that work just fine (jikes and gnu javac among others) that does not address the libraries. The gnu classpath project, (I didn't included a link to keep from slashdotting their already slow servers) is attempting to fill the missing step, but needs help.Most of the classes that have not been completed are UI specific either under AWT or Swing.

    As a post script, my submitted articles list shows this one as being rejected. Oh well...

  • The text of this Slashdot article is misleading. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Artifex ( 18308 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @08:54PM (#8119349) Journal
    You can't say which distros own which percentage of the overall market by looking at server numbers alone. Doing so completely ignores workstations (for that matter, it also ignored embedded Linux as well, but let's not quibble) - and presumably there are a lot more (potential) workstations to run Linux on the desktop than (potential) servers to run Linux.

  • Debian Java Issues (Score:4, Informative)

    by lars_boegild_thomsen ( 632303 ) <lth@c o w .dk> on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @10:43PM (#8119983) Homepage Journal
    Well - I never really got this one. I actually like Debian's strict policy on software licenses even if it now and then causes some inconvenience. As for Java - well - it didn't take me long to realize that I needed the original - and that Blackdown have a ready made Debian package that can be included in apt's sources.list. That's all - one line in a configuration file and you've got perfectly working Java in Debian.

    And here's the line:

    deb ftp://ftp.tux.org/pub/java/debian/ testing non-free main

    By the way - I would assume this problem to be exactly the same on all other Linux distro's due to SUN's licensing. Isn't that so?

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