i used both debian and red hat - and i'm quite impressed with the latest red hat versions. debian was a little too unfriendly - like trying to install oracle on debian or the like. i mean, even installing oracle on red hat sucks cuz of oracle's horrible install program(s) ...

my big beef with redhat is that it lacks a useful upgrade mechanism, especially in comparison to the magic of apt-get. i do wish it were less painful to roll your own debian packages, though. and that netbase didn't depend on netkit-inetd for no particular reason other than to annoy those of us who have no need for inetd.

(hard to install oracle? who cares? only losers use oracle.)

...like govenor davis...

What about "up2date" on redhat? It seems to work great, at least for me.

i'll admit to not having any experience with up2date, but my impression is that it is a very different beast from apt-get. (up2date seems more oriented towards updating your current installation, whereas installing new stuff with apt-get is just a matter of "apt-get install galeon" and having it figure out all the dependencies, download the packages, etc.)

and up2date requires a subscription to the redhat network, no?

Your correct, up2date is more for updating the current installation. It does require a subscription to the redhat network, which is no more than your full name, email address, and system hostname.

I think debian is the only linux distro I haven't tried yet. Maybe it's time I try it out