<quote who="Ron Johnson">
> There is *no* dependency hell in the "stable" version of Debian.
> There are times, occasionally, where packages get moved into "test-
> ing" or "unstable" before a subsidiary package gets moved, or there
> may be a packaging bug, where the maintainer forgot to update the
> dependencies. Wait a few days, and it'll get fixed.
>
>> I've had bad experiences with Mandrake and simple hardware, like a
>> mouse.
>> And 8.0 (2.4.3 based) paniced a lot, but that was probably the
>> instability
>> of that kernel.
>
> How geeky are you?
>
> If so, install a minimal Debian Woody (i.e., stable). Then imme-
> diately upgrade to "testing", and then make a combined "testing/
> unstable" system. By keeping up with it on a weekly basis, you'll
> be very happy with it.
What I need to do is setup a Linux workstation in the lab I work in. I
want to set it up and forget about it, I've got plenty of work and several
2K/XP machines to worry about. I won't even be the one usign it, it's for
a grad student in the lab.
All it's going to do is run Mathematica and some fortran code, and I'll
want samba. Possibly OOo, if it proves useful, and websurfing. I don't
forsee any problem setting any of this up, in a minimal fashion. The
machine is an old P2, no exotic hardware support needed. Although hooking
it up to a DAQ board might be an interesting future project...
The reason I'm looking at Debian is because of apt, I'd like to be able to
tune it so that all I get are security updates, and they are applied
automagically, as needed. Alternately, I'll apply them manually as they
come out.
> The purpose of the military isn't to pay your college tuition or
> give you a little extra income; it's to "kill people and break
> things".
> Surprisingly, not everyone understands that.
Q: Doesn't it bother you that the military is funding your research, and
that it could be used as a weapon?
A: I used to have faith in my government, but now I take comfort in the
fact that it probably won't work.
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Received on 11/06/03
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