fedora vs. Debian?

[Tony Baechler]

Hi,

One consideration might be whether you like the newest and latest 
software.  Debian Stable is very stable, hence the name.  However, 
there is only a new stable release every 1.5 to 2 years.  Debian 
Sarge came out in June 2005 and the new stable version hasn't been 
released yet.  This is great for a server environment since you only 
have to deal with a major upgrade every couple years but might not be 
good for a casual user who wants the latest and greatest.  Also it's 
worth noting that the only Speakup kernel I know of in Sarge is 
2.4.27 and it doesn't get security fixes.  If it does, I wouldn't 
know anyway since I'm running 2.6.8, the latest 2.6 kernel in 
Sarge.  Finally the Testing release generally doesn't get security 
updates until right before the new Stable release and after the big 
freeze.  Updates from Unstable go into testing after a day if marked 
urgent but that's a day delay for security fixes.  I haven't used the 
new Debian Installer so I can't comment.  I haven't used Fedora 
either but I was very frustrated with the Red Hat installer when I 
looked last.  Personally I think I prefer Debian packages better 
because they have better dependency tracking.  It's very difficult to 
really screw things up with Debian.  Red Hat uses RPM and I found it 
more difficult to use.  Debian has a package pool while Red Hat 
didn't last time I looked.

At 07:52 PM 1/18/07 -0500, you wrote:
>In terms of support, flexibility, is there really a difference?
>I understand both distributions are strong on their integrated packages.
>Both support hardware speech, what I will be using.
>But is there anything else about one package over the other that should be
>considered when weighing them?
>Karen

----------
Tony Baechler
Baechler Productions


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