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<page title="Debian Advantages" keywords="Debian, Vorteile, Advantages">

<h1 align=center>Debian Advantages HOWTO</h1>

<h3>Scope of this document</h3>

<blockquote>

   <p>This document aims to describe common advantages of the use of
   Debian GNU, especially Debian GNU/Linux instead of other GNU/Linux
   distributions.</p>

</blockquote>

<faqtoc>

<h3>Debian's Advantages</h3>

<question id=upgrade q="Upgradability">

<p>A Debian GNU system is upgraded to a new minor subrelease or to a
new major release by using one out of many methods.  Single desktop
machines can use the CD-ROM-method or the network-method while the
machine runs without the need to reboot it.</p>

<p>Machines connected to a network, production machines, that must not
be taken down, normally use the network-method directly.  There is
no need to take the machine down, reboot it or switch into
single-user mode for upgrading it.  Using either apt-get
(recomended), dpkg-ftp or dpkg-http the admin is able to access
various archives on the net or on local disks/cdroms.</p>

<p>Reviews of other distributions have shown that the possibility to
upgrade a system without taking it down, rebooting or even crashing
it seems to be a unique feature of Debian GNU.</p>

</question>

<question id=avail q="Availability">

<p>Debian GNU has been released for several architectures using the
Linux kernel.  Ports using a different kernel (Hurd, NetBSD and
FreeBSD) are in progress as well.</p>

<p>This gives the administrator of machines in a heterogenous network
the advantage of using the same operating system on all machines which will
reduce maintenance time significantly.  Even if you like the
networking code of FreeBSD more than the one from Linux you don't
have to miss the remaining Debian system around.</p>

<p>The Debian project is the only distribution which officially
supports the m68k, mips, mipsel, sparc architectures, which may not be
commercially interesting and hence don't get company-support for other
distributions.  These ports will be maintained inside of Debian as
long as there is interest and sufficient machines are available.</p>

<p>
<ul>
<li> Debian 2.1 (slink): 4 architectures
<li> Debian 2.2 (potato): 6 architectures
<li> Debian 3.0 (woody): 11 architectures
</ul>
</p>

</question>

<question id=free q="Debian is Free">

<p>Debian reads and interprets licenses of software very careful.
With the <a href="http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines">\
Debian Free Software Guidelines</a> a rule-set exists that helps
separate Free Software from non-free software.  Using only Debian the
user can be sure to be granted all required freedoms.</p>

</question>

<question id=integrate q="Integration">

<p>Debian packages integrate very well into the entire system.
Several tools and gadgets are used to help connecting packages to
each other, presenting the user a well maintained and round system.</p>

<p>The basis to this are fine grained dependencies for all packages,
the menu-system that connects all prominent programs to the menus
of all window managers, documentation for all packages combined
with dwww, dhelp in /usr/share/doc/, support
for alternative programs (e.g. several concurrent implementations
of vi) etc.</p>

<p>Debian's clean implementation of SysV boot scripts also keeps
things clear and simple.  If something weird happens during boot
time, you know where to look.  It's more versatile and cleaner than
a rc.local or a mix of both.  It also makes upgrading easy, even
after a lot of customizing.</p>

<p>Additionally, due to an abstraction layer using `update-rc.d' and
`rc' it is possible to replace the common SysV init scripts by
something else, like file-rc, that comes with one single
configuration file instead of a farm of links.</p>

<p>Fine grained dependencies enables the user to type 'apt-get install
foo' and not only the foo-package will be installed but every other
package foo needs as well.  There is no need to look for library
bar or tool baz in order to get the foo-package work, it gets
installed at the same time, apt-get takes care of it.</p>

</question>

<question id=fhs q="Filesystem Standard">

<p>Debian follows the <a href="http://www.pathname.com/fhs/">\
Filesystem Hierarchy Standard</a> very close.  Hence, all Debian
package implement the same file and directory structure.
<code>/etc</code>. contains all configuration files, they don't
clutter the entire filesystem instead.  <code>/usr/local</code> and
<code>/opt</code> are not touched by Debian but reserved for the local
admin.  Documentation is placed in <code>/usr/share</code> etc.</p>

</question>

<question id=config q="Configuration Files">

<p>Configuration files are treated specially.  Every package that
provides configuration files has them marked so the package system
knows about them.  When a package is upgraded, the configuration file
is not automatically overwritten when it was modified locally.
Instead the admin is informed and offered to show the differenced
between the local and the new configuration file.</p>

</question>

<question id=debconf q="Configuration Management">

<p>Much of the configuration is handled by debconf, which itself
offeres a variety of frontends to use.  People who like not to be
annoyed with questions can configure it to skip many questions and use
default values instead.  Those who prefer a graphical interface, can
configure it to use a GTK frontend.  This technique will also be used
in the upcoming debian-installer.</p>

</question>

<question id=source q="Source">

<p>For all packages of the distribution the whole source is
available.  The entire distribution is free according to the DFSG
which also means that everybody can improve packages and still
distribute them.</p>

<p>Pristine source and Debian improvements are kept in separate files,
so one does not need to fetch the whole source archive again in
order to keep up with changes.  Instead just the new diff-file is
needed.  This can save a lot of time (and money if you have to pay
for traffic or time) in the case of large packages (i.e. emacs,
XFree86, gcc).</p>

</question>

<question id=quality q="High Quality">

<p>The maintainers generally have a strong personal interest in each
package they maintain, since they normally volunteered to maintain
it because they wanted to use it themselves.  This results in in
high quality work, by highly motivated, and generally technically
skillful people, which in turn gives us high quality throughout the
whole distribution.</p>

</question>

<question id=preconf q="Pre-Configuration">

<p>Each Debian package comes preconfigured.  As a result, all programs
work out-of-the-box once they're installed, there is no need to
reconfigure them afterwards.  Of course, you are free to
reconfigure or fine-tune the packages and Debian packages will not
throw away your changes.</p>

</question>

<question id=bts q="Bug Tracking System">

<p>The Debian Project maintains an open bug tracking system where
everybody is able to report bugs to.  Under normal circumstances
bugs will be fixed within a few days.</p>

</question>

<question id=testbed q="Testbed">

<p>The Debian-Project pays more attention to quality and testing than
to often-releasing.  As a result of this, each released version of
Debian GNU has been well tested over a long period and all major
bugs have been removed.</p>

<p>Indeed, the entire distribution is tested by at least all active
developers and interested users from the beginning.  The entire
development system is available for download and testing during the
whole development period.</p>

</question>

<question id=admin q="Remote Maintenance">

<p>A Debian GNU system can fully administered remotely.  This includes
configuration and package maintenance as well as installation or
removal of new packages.</p>

<p>This is a unique feature of Debian GNU.  You can do a full
operating system upgrade remotely, almost always without the need
to reboot, and generally without the services that the machine
offers being off the air for more than a few minutes.</p>

<p>While someone with deep experience can achieve this result on other
operating systems, they will often have to adopt some fairly
extreme tricks to do it, will not be at all sure that it is going
to work, and will need to be very careful that each step is
performed in exactly the right order.  If they get it wrong, they
will generally need physical access to the machine to recover.</p>

<p>That's OK it it's in the room next door, but there are times when
physical access is difficult, expensive or pretty much impossible.</p>

<p>With Debian GNU not only is this possible, it is easy.  It is even
possible for an only mildly skilled system administrator to perform
actions as fraught with worries as remotely replacing the kernel, and rebooting
(in the hope that the machine will come back up in a minute or
two), with a reasonable expectation of success.</p>

<p>This can be especially important in the case of machines that are a
security concern.  If a security bug is discovered in the kernel,
or a network server, the ability to instantly access the server and
install the fix (when it becomes available) could be very
important.  Especially if the alternative involves getting a
long-haul flight.</p>

</question>

<question id=syslog q="Syslog">

<p>Using Debian GNU you can be relatively sure that syslog files
contain what they should - contrary to other unices where you can
depend on syslog messages ending up in any file but not the one you
would expect them.  It seems that nothing is compiled to use the
correct syslog facility.  Thus you'll get non-mail programs logging
to facility mail, mail progs logging to daemon or local1, and so
on.  Debian's policy ensures that all programs log to the
appropriate facility.</p>

</question>

<question id=support q="Breadth of Support">

<p>Many useful tools are just an "apt-get install" away from running
on Debian.  While all Debian software can be made to run on other
systems.  Things are very easy to install, and most of the time
someone else will deal with the upgrade issues for you.</p>

<p>It's those little things that make Debian great.

</question>

<question id=user q="User Support">

<p>Debian does not have an office in any country providing first- and
second-level support.  This is an advantage since pretty much any
problem is likely to be answered within a few hours by other expert
Debian users or Debian developers on one of the mailing lists.</p>

</question>

<question id=testing q="Separation between stable/testing/unstable">

<p>The separation between stable, testing and unstable offers the user
three distributions he can choose from, with different scopes and
contents.  For
the average user, Debian stable is the distribution to use.  For those
who need more recent packages but don't want to run bleeding edge
software, while not depending on timely security and other updates,
Debian testing may be what they are looking for.  Users
who always want to run most recent software, Debian unstable will be
their choice.</p>

</question>

<question id=size q="Size of the Distribution">

<p>Debian contains more packages than any other GNU/Linux
distribution, leaving the user with a lot of Free Software to choose
and use.  Using mechanisms like <code>update-alternatives</code> more
than one similar package can be installed simultaneously so the user
has choice.</p>

</question>

<author>Summarised by Martin Schulze</author>

</page>

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