Debian vs RedHat?

What are the major differences between Debian and Redhat (fedora or RHEL)?
How would a person pick a distro between the two?

 

The difference is, is that RHEL is a commercial distribution(Fedora is a community distribution, though) and Debian is a community distribution. Also, Debian uses it's own dpkg and aptitude for package management, while RHEL/Fedora uses RPM and Yum(which in my opinion are much better, but that's not the point). As for choosing a distribution, one would have to try it out.

 

That is actually very relevant to which distro to choose. Why do you say Yum is much better?

 

You should compare CentOS vs Debian Stable instead since RHEL includes software support costs.

 

It's much more automated, breaks less, and works pretty fast(especially with everyone using deltarpms now, which are only the updated bits of a package, so it's much smaller).

Even then, it's an entirely different ballgame.

 

Agree presto is pretty amazing.

 

That's the first time I've ever read of someone saying yum/rpm 'works better' or is 'faster' than apt-get.

Not starting anything, I just didn't figure yum/rpm has made such great strides or is impressing people. That's good, though. I'm a fan of both Debian and Fedora. Not so much Ubuntu although I usually have it on a partition.

 

If you need commercial support go for RHEL, otherwise it's totally up to you.

Sounds like deb/apt is something strange in comparison to rpm/yum. Why do you think so?

Debian has deltas too, they are just not that popular.
I've never had broken packages in Debian stable as long as my sources.list was clean. If you include dubious sources in a rpm based distro you'll run into trouble too.
Last but not least I've never noticed that apt was slower than yum. On the contrary, yum was significantly slower on Mandriva 2009 than on Debian Etch. I can't tell if this is true for other rpm-based distros too.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a Debian fan for good reasons, but I have no objections against Red Hat systems or rpm/yum. I just want to make clear that some of the statements in this thread seem to be biased.

 

+1. When I switched over to Debian 3 years ago, one of the arguments that convinced me was that Debian´s apt-get worked much better than rpm based management systems, that dependencies would be taken care of cleanly. It hence came as a surprise to me when Thomas said rpm/yum works better...


puter1: Why arent you a fan of Ubuntu?

 

Yeah, either CentOS or Scientific Linux as it is based on RHEL and is free.

 

It's a much cleaner implementation of package management, in my opinion.

Mandriva's yum was probably a lot slower - it doesn't use yum and never has

Debian does have deltas but they're not really supported well like Fedora.

And Yum/RPM tends to be better at handling scenairios when you're dealing with multiple repositories.

RPM received quite a bit of negative reputation in the pre-2005 era, but it's actually not only improved a lot, but surpassed dpkg, in my opinion. One big thing to remember is a few totally different distributions use RPM(so it's not a good idea to install opensuse packages on fedora or vice versa).

 

Argh! You're right. I shouldn't use aliases that excessive.

 

Thomas summed it up nicely.

Yum freed me from rpm dependecy hell Until Yum Debian had big advantage because of its dpkg -> apt-get -> aptitude.
Now we have rpm -> yum -> yumex (on CentOS) and its equal.

Which to choose? I'd say the one you feel more comfortable with. But for enterprise usage, i'd use RHEL, because of support, because RHEL company gives back lots to community.

 

Oh, I said why in another thread... couldn't find where it was asked...lol!

Just ask Debian users. They don't contribute upstream as much considering their clout and influence for one thing. Debian devs aren't too happy with the sharing proportion which is tipped heavily in Debian's side of contribution. Also, Ubuntu seems to always go their own way and change things when the rest have a different format.

One more reason: Canonical, big corp. but what is their contribution? Even if one would be concerned of Red Hat being a corp., too, they have far more contribution in Linux and are always giving something back. Why isn't Canonical/Ubuntu?

A main positive, though, is the Wayland Server project. It sounds interesting!

 

Actually, almost all ubuntu developers are also Debian developers, so your point is mute.

And as for Ubuntu's changes to upstream Gnome - Gnome doesn't accept them, and that isn't Canonical's fault.

 

Mute? Go to the Debian forums and tell the participants that. Have fun.

I never talked about Gnome w.r.t. upstream contribution. You didn't really address the critique, imho. Also, it's not mine... it's just what I read and it's easily found with a Google search.

 

I realize that. Also, what does Ubuntu really do to advance Debian? Individual packages, certainly, but not enough to actually push anything noticeable to Debian. It's not that Ubuntu doesn't contribute, it's that there isn't much to contribute. And with Gnome, Gnome doesn't *want* Ubuntu's additions and changes. Hence the reason we have Unity and Gnome Shell.

 

I'm sure puter1 meant "moot".

Used RPM (RedHat, Mandrake) based distros a long time ago. As a package manager, RPM was better than nothing, but other than that it just sucked.

I tried a few other distros and even some BSD-based distros, but was never satisfied with the package management.

Went to *buntu and discovered apt/Adept/etc., and was amazed at how easy package management really was when the package manager had some intelligence. I haven't gone back, and have no intention of going back to any distro NOT based on apt.

Not downing anyone else, and I'm sure that RPM/Yum is a whole lot better than RPM used to be -- is has to!!