Re: Best suiting OS

On Fri, 2 Oct 2009, Matthew Wakeling wrote:

> The reason we switched that machine to Debian was due to the
> postgresql-devel package being missing for Red Hat. We need that package
> in order to install some of our more interesting extensions. A quick
> look at http://yum.pgsqlrpms.org/8.4/fedora/fedora-9-x86_64/ indicates
> that this package is still missing.

So you mention that on pgsql-performance, not even close to the most
popular list here, and before I even read your e-mail the missing file is
already fixed because the maintainer reads this and noted a mistake (for
that old and and what is officially a quite unsupported Fedora version).
That seems like a pretty well supported PostgreSQL package set to me, no?

> Besides, both I and our sysadmin are much more used to Debian. We were
> dealing with an old install of RH from our old sysadmin and couldn't be
> bothered to work out the Red Hat Way(tm). Much easier to un-switch OSes.

Ah, here we have your real reason.  It's OK to say "I don't like the Red
Hat Way and am more used to Debian" and have reasons for why that is.
You don't need to sling FUD about the things you didn't even try seriously
to support that.  Packaging is hard work, and I've gotten one-off bad
packages from everybody at some point, including Debian derived ones.
They don't have a magic wand that makes their packages immune to all
possible human error for things the automated tests don't check.

--
* Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD