Even though I'm using OSX on a daily basis now, I'm still very fond of my Debian systems, of which 4 real systems and countless VMware images surround me just in one room here.
What I like the most about Debian is it's package maintainence and update facilities, specifically apt/dpkg. With only a 2 commands the entire system can be updated even down to the most low level libraries:
$ apt-get update $ apt-get dist-upgrade
Also, all applications can be installed on demand, with dependencies, all resolved directly over the network:
$ apt-get install mozilla-firefox forrest groovy eclipse-sdk
Personally the reason why I like this is because the ability to update the software on the system gives me the feeling like I've somehow just got a new computer, and this reinvigorates the excitement and rush one gets when making a fresh purchase.
Looking back, I remember the last time I purchased a hifi system (it's a while ago as it's still sitting in Australia waiting for me to start using it again when I get back from Germany), I was totally psyched, and couldn't stop playing music, rearranging the speakers around the room, adjusting the EQ, purchasing CD's, downloaded MOD/S3M's for my Amiga, etc, just to learn and see what it could do.
After a few months though, I became used to it's high quality of sound and had experimented with all its features to the point where the excitement and rush of getting the hifi wore off.
Part of the reason why the excitement wore off was because I'd experimented and used all of the features the device had to offer, and I had to either spend money and get a new hifi or some 3rd party extension to have newer features.
Casting this forward into APT, everytime I do an apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade, I know I've got the latest and greatest software available from the APT archive, and that there's a whole new set of features that have just been installed on my system.
A whole new set of features means there's always something new to discover in addition to the depth and complexity of a Unix system anyway, and for me, this helps retain the adventureous feeling of having a brand new system. So much so, that I usually apt-get dist-upgrade daily :)
One of the first things I did when I got my Powerbook was to see if APT had been ported to OSX so that I could still have access to the wealth of open source and freely available software that make up the Debian archive.
It was great to see that Fink was already available, which is a port of APT/DPKG to OSX, amongst other things. Also, yesterday I came across the OSX Gentoo project which also looks awesome, allowing you to emerge Gentoo apps just like under a Linux system.
Posted by crafterm at March 16, 2005 12:12 PM | TrackBackYo MC, still in love with Debian ? Nice to see. I will never forget the time when u introduced me some years ago to Debian and your final words after I managed to install Woody for the first time: "Welcome to the real world". Some days ago i gave SUSE 9.2 a try, downloading the mini ISO, burning it on a R/W. The installation from the UNI server Hannover via DSL was pretty easy. After some mins and without Reboot the basics were working. However it took me hours to get the Radeon 9800 pro and some other "latest" hardware stuff working. Worst, my old Quake 3 has no sound :( . haha. Well, I guess around easter I will switch back to Debian. Cheers, Olaf.
Posted by: Olaf Eberhardt at March 16, 2005 05:30 PMAlso try DarwinPorts, which is based on the nice BSD Ports system. While I've only ever run fink on my Mac, I am not too pleased with it as its dependencies are too insane (far too many packages and libs needed just for a simple app). DarwinPorts seems to be recommended by some hard-core OS X people who are "in the know" and I will be trying it as soon as I find time.
Have fun!
CM