I've been watching Debian's alpha list and I stand by my statement.
> Only installation disks need still a bit of work, but I installed
> Debian/Alpha in november using only Debian stuff without needing
> anything from Redhat.
>
> The system runs in production mode since December, and from what I
> read on the axp-list, Debian/Alpha seems too works better than
> Redhat5.0 at least in a number of areas (the developement system,
> particularly g77, g++, and also NIS): redhat seems to have some
> trouble for this kind of thing, it works perfectly for us.
>
> Of course it may be possible that Debian/Alpha has problem of its
> own, but for us it works perfectly and has all software packages we
> need (perhaps already much more than redhat).
An interesting argument. But it seems a bit at odds with reality.
Both Debian and RH use available gnu-ware so the packages built
are basically the same except for the system admin tools. Of
course each one may have several different packages the other
doesn't but even that shouldn't be hugely different. Pretty
much the real difference to me is that RH ported the gnu-ware
to Alpha first and Debian benefits from that work, although
to listen to them bad mouth RH on the list you'd think RH
was their enemy. I agree with Miguel about the distributions
competing vs cooperating. The fact that Debian is second gives
them an opportunity to pick up fixes from the front runner's
work and in addition fix the outstanding problems before they
do a release. I still see June or so as the earliest to look at
Debian as a true alternative to RH. And as I said, I'll look at
it when it's available to see whether it is more useful than RH
which I currently run on my systems. (RH4.2, not 5.0. I tend to
stay one step back from the bleeding edge)
>
> Loic
-- Regards,Wes