On 12/02/07 13:49 -0800, Randall R Schulz wrote:
Do the Debian maintainers monitor security advisories and promptly release easily installed updates? Do they even have anything comparable to YOU?
Actually, it's pretty easy to keep a Debian box updated. Add the appropriate security.debian.org url to your apt sources and then use cron-apt to download nightly any available updates and inform you by email, so you can review and install them. Of course if you need to deal with many boxes, you could turn to cfengine etc.
I always got the impression that Debian was for the extremely self-reliant Linux user. Personally, that's a fine philosophy, but I don't have time to do all that and actually use my Linux system for my own work. If that _is_ your work, then it makes sense, but if Linux is means for you rather than an end (say, you're a site administrator at an installation with many Linux users), then it makes sense to take advantage of the service provided by Novell in the form of security updates pre-built and delivered through an integrated mechanism (YOU).
I've found maintaining our Debian boxes at work to be pretty easy. One big advantage is the large maintainer base which tends to mean that security patches etc are delivered quite quickly. Another is the fact that upgrading Debian over major releases is a doddle compared to some other (*cough*) distros. ;-) Naturally, I still use openSUSE as my desktop - it's pretty slick, has great multimedia support thanks to the unofficial maintainers and I like the fact that we're usually the first to get any new KDE goodness that's been developed. Craig -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org