Isaac as a Pure Debian User

My life with GNU/Linux started with an installation of Slackware. After running the distribution for a while, I'd more or less treat it for granted that installing everything is easy, even if it is not provided by Slackware: just download the source, type make and then make install, and be happy with what it gives you.

But then, things are not that simple. After a couple of package upgrades, some packages will need different versions of libraries, and things will fail rather randomly. It is usually difficult to track down the exact cause of the problems, short of installing a new version of the Slackware distribution and recompile everything. Well, that's managable, given that it has to be done only every couple of years. After all, I come from the DOS world, where one had to reinstall everything every few months or the system is so broken that it is unusable.

Uninstalling software is also a problem. Well, one can always find the executable program used by the software, but one nearly never find all the data files installed. That's something not very nice about, but what to worry about if you have to reinstall it from scratch from time to time?

The real blow comes from a rather unexpected source: crackers, those who get into another's computer without consent for various reasons from curiosity to dishonesty. I've noticed my computer had been broken into for at least 3 times, and I simply have no way to tell why that happened. What program has holes? Had a password been stolen? I simply can't tell. And I've removed the programs replaced by the crackers and after a few months, the problem gets back.

I had been reading about Debian for quite some time by then, and I know it would be time to give it a try. After getting it work, I can only regret not doing that earlier. It provides many more programs than Slackware out of the box, and follows a very good directory structure that one can actually expect where programs are installed. It allows life installation and removal of software packages, so you don't have to reboot or even shut down those services for those silly reasons. Now upgrading is a real possibility, and I can do it as frequently as daily. Version differences are recorded by those who build the packages, which usually does the right thing. And, they are so open that they tell people what bugs to expect in their web site, and what are the progress to deal with those bugs!

More importantly is the developer community that builds Debian. Debian is a volunteer project, meaning that commercial forces are absent from Debian, and it doesn't have to rush for release when the packages are not ready. One can easily contribute by filing bug reports and fixes, and you can see your contribution being incorporated into the software package very quickly. And after some time I've learnt that the unstable distribution is not really unstable at all, and I start running that distribution in my desktop computer.

I've been thinking about a Debian developer a few times, but so far I didn't. I found that I really cannot afford the amount of time and patience to be one, which is quite unlucky. My contribution to the distribution continues, however; and one of the great thing about Debian is that you don't need to give as much as a Debian developer in order to contribute real thing into it.