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Re: why Debian?

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On 14/11/2021 12:56, Thanos Katsiolis wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am new to the Debian distribution and I would like to hear opinions
> from experienced users on why someone should choose them as OS.
> The reasons I chose them is that Debian is considered a stable and
> reliable OS (the policy of the OS is not to include as many and as
> much quickly as possible new features), and that it has a large and
> dependable community.

Personally,  I chose Debian because of it's amazing package installer
"apt". Like many people, I started with Windows (well, my first computer
was earlier than that, but irrelevant to this discussion). Software
management was (and - although "winget" is making it better - still kind
of is) a bit of a nightmare. You'd either have to got to the developer's
website and download an installer or, if you were lucky, there are sites
like TUCOWS and Sourceforge where you could download several installers.
But windows has always tended to favour the idea of an installer, rather
than a package to be installed. Sure, MSI files exist, but they're still
kind of second rate compared to an EXE installer.

So, when I was venturing into Linux, I started off with Mandrake Linux
(which I got from a CD on a magazine). Mandrake Linux introduced me to
the concept of a Software Repository - a single server hosting just
about any programs you could want. Want a spreadsheet application?
Install StarOffice. Want games? There's plenty of those, too. All
available for free. However, Mandrake is a RedHat-based distribution so,
although there was /so much/ software available through the repository,
these were the days before "yum". So to install a package, you had to
download the RPM for what you wanted, then try to install it, then
download all the dependencies that it needed and try to install those,
then download all the dependencies THEY required and so on.

A friend of mine, however, used Debian Linux and "apt" was a revelation.
With apt (I think we used "dselect" in those days, but "apt-get" worked
just as well if you knew what you wanted to install), it was just a
single command. "apt-get install soffice" was enough to install
StarOffice and all the libraries it required. This was a minor miracle
to me, and I've never really looked back.

Of course, nowadays, you can do the same thing with "yum" and "dnf" on
RedHat based distros, and even Windows is getting to the point where
plenty of software is available through "winget install xxx", but I'm
happy to stick with Debian.

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Thread

why Debian? Thanos Katsiolis <kls.thanos@gmail.com> - 2021-11-14 14:00 +0100
  Re: why Debian? Karthik <karthikgatiganti@gmail.com> - 2021-11-14 15:00 +0100
    Re: why Debian? phoebus phoebus <frphoebus@yahoo.fr> - 2021-11-14 15:20 +0100
    Re: why Debian? Karen Lewellen <klewellen@shellworld.net> - 2021-11-14 18:40 +0100
  Re: why Debian? Darac Marjal <mailinglist@darac.org.uk> - 2021-11-14 17:00 +0100
  Re: why Debian? Joe <joe@jretrading.com> - 2021-11-14 17:10 +0100
  Re: why Debian? Nate Bargmann <n0nb@n0nb.us> - 2021-11-14 19:30 +0100
  Re: why Debian? David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2021-11-15 05:50 +0100
  Re: why Debian? 황병희 <soyeomul@doraji.xyz> - 2021-11-15 07:50 +0100
  Re: why Debian? Anssi Saari <as@sci.fi> - 2021-12-02 12:10 +0100
    Re: why Debian? Piper H <potthua@gmail.com> - 2021-12-02 13:10 +0100
      Re: why Debian? Christian Britz <cbritz@t-online.de> - 2021-12-02 14:00 +0100
      Re: why Debian? Peter Ehlert <pb21a@sdi-baja.com> - 2021-12-02 16:10 +0100
      Re: why Debian? Karthik <karthikgatiganti@gmail.com> - 2021-12-02 17:00 +0100
        Re: why Debian? Piper H <potthua@gmail.com> - 2021-12-02 21:10 +0100
          Re: why Debian? Karthik <karthikgatiganti@gmail.com> - 2021-12-03 00:10 +0100
            Re: why Debian? Piper H <potthua@gmail.com> - 2021-12-03 02:00 +0100
      Re: why Debian? "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> - 2021-12-02 21:00 +0100
        Re: why Debian? Piper H <potthua@gmail.com> - 2021-12-02 21:10 +0100
      Re: why Debian? SAIFI <saifi@strikr.io> - 2021-12-03 06:40 +0100
        Re: why Debian? Piper H <potthua@gmail.com> - 2021-12-03 07:20 +0100

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