Re: Migrating from RedHat to Debian

From: Doug Mitton (doug_mitton_at_hotmail.x.com)
Date: 11/06/03 

Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 16:16:34 -0500

"Madhusudan Singh" <spammers-go-here@nowhere.now> wrote:

>I have almost decided to choose Debian over other alternatives in my
>forced migration away from RedHat (long time user - RH 5.0 to RH 9.0).
>
>My reasons are :
>
>1. Unlike Suse, it is free for download.
>2. Has a highly acclaimed upgrade utility call apt-get.
>3. Is likely to continue, free of any incovenient corporate decisions, unlike RedHat.
>4. Does not need to be compiled from source completely like Gentoo.
>5. Has been around for a long time, and has a relatively large user base,
>compared to say, Slackware.
>6. I am not particularly averse to using scripts to configure many things.
>
>I do have a few questions :
>
>1. As a person almost exclusively exposed to RedHat admin, how different
>is the file structure ? Are all the init scripts in /etc/rc.d/init.d ? Are
>all the configuration files roughly in /etc ? Are all the kernel modules
>in /lib/modules/kernel-x.y ?
>
>2. How easy is it to set up X ? Is /etc/XF86Config still the file to use ?
>Does a WM like GNOME have to be compiled for each installation ?
>
>3. Is it possible to properly convert RH rpms into meaningful Debian dpkgs
>? For instance, I use the Intel Fortran Compiler, which is distributed in
>rpm format alone (at least till now, maybe they will respond to this
>RedHat decision soon). Would it be possible to translate that ?
>
>4. Not to start a flame war, but how different is FreeBSD really from
>linux (in terms of the learning curve specifically in terms of 1, 2 and 3
>above) ?

A shortcut to Debian is to download the single CD Knoppix
distribution. If you like it and it detects all your hardware it will
install to a hardrive partition. It will give you a fast "leg up"
into the distribution.

I recently took this route. So far, the only problem I've found is
that KDE is pretty tightly integrated into the default framework and
I've had trouble using alternate window managers. 

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