[wplug] Debian questions

[Zach Paine]

On Sun, 06 May 2001 21:12:32 David G Matthews wrote:
> 1.  Is it possible to use ReiserFS with Debian (even unstable)?  I like
> Reiser and wouldn't want to give it up.

As previously stated this is kernel dependant, not distro.

> 2.  How well does the "alien" script (to convert RPM's to DEB's) work?  A
> few of the packages I use are mostly distributed as RPM's, and I haven't
> been able to track down deb's for them.

Never used it myself.  I have yet to run into a program that there weren't
debs for somewhere.  The first place to try is packages.debian.org and
search all of their distribution versions (stable, unstable, testing),
secondarily, you can try the program's website, third, search google.  Most
times apt-get install program-name will take care of it. What programs are
you talking about specifically?

> 3.  How hard is it to use a 2.4.x kernel and X4.x?

Debian actually has some nice kernel tools packaged with it.  Basically you
configure the kernel as you usually would and then run make-kpkg (with a
few arguments) and it creates a package that will install and setup your
new kernel.  As for X4, that's what I'm using and that's what is standard
in unstable and testing.

> 4.  How multimedia friendly is it.  (This one's really important for me,
> since I use my box mostly for audio.  I can't use a distro that's more
> aimed towards servers.)

As multimedia friendly as any other distro.  Although Debian is used on
servers a lot, I think that it's aim is bomb-ass package managment and
standards adherence which benefit servers but multimedia platforms as well.
 Oh and debian is the only truly free (as in speech) distro.  Meaning if
you want netscape... you just run apt-get install netscape.  It's just in a
non-free section.

-- 
Zach Paine
http://www.wplug.org/~zman/zman.key
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