blackbelt_jones,
You mention that the package manager sorts it out, I can agree on that standpoint. Don't you think that slapt-get/gslapt will get the job done as good as the Debian equivalent? Cheesy
I much rather have a dozen Slackware packages taking care of all that instead of downloading approximately 5-10 different packages for each purposes.
In the long run I would have at least 200 packages needed to be downloaded, and to what use when I can make it simple?
I agree with saulgoode on the FACT that some of prefer a simpler approach to get it done.
No, I'm sorry. You just don't understand how it works. I'm pretty sure you don't have to download more software for debian. **
I'm willing to grant Vector superior performance, and gladly, but this idea that Debian has too many software packages in its repositories is just bizarre. It's like saying Google has too many websites. You're not supposed to surf every website in Google; you're supposed to be able to easily find whatever website you need, all of it in one place. Likewise, you're not supposed to download and install everything that's on the 21 debian disks. It's just that pretty much all of the free gnu software in the world is there... AND IT'S DEPENDANCIES, in one place, and that gives the user the most possible options.
Time and again, I went to slapt-get, and couldn't find what I was looking for... and so I had to go searching, and building, and searching for dependencies, and building dependencies, and dependencies of dependencies, and
that is not "simple". SImple is everything and its dependancies in one place, where a single command can locate, calculate, download and install all of them together.
The thing is, I think that Vector is pretty cool, I wish that I'd been able to make it work for me, and I hope to use it again real soon, for my second computer. I consider it my failure that I couldn't get it working on my main desktop just the way I wanted, and I think in many ways Vector is the superior product... but somehow, we're arguing about the one thing where debian has a leg up on almost everything else (the "almost" being a nod to other debian-based systems), and your idea of "simplicity" is exactly the opposite of the end user's reality. Too many packages? Are you just messing with me?
**Actually, I guess that depends. I mean if you want the whole distro on CDs well, yeah I guess that does mean downloading more software-- but of course, downloading 21 isos isn't complicated. It's just BIG. More importantly, that's not usually how it's done. I did it that way because I intend to have a debian system running offline, where I won't have access to the repositories, but anyone intending to run debian online can download and burn a net install image of maybe 170 mbs, use that to create a base system, and then download and install just what they need off the web.
And for the CD version, you're certainly not going to need all those CDs to get a decent debian install going. I don't remember ever using beyond disk 3, maybe 4. Disk 1 is all you need to get a bare bones gnome desktop running. I downloaded them all because, if I'm going to be running offline, I want to be damn sure that I have access to all the software that's available, cause you just never know what's going to come up.
