Andreas wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I compiled the latest and greatest PG server on SUSE systems until now.
>
> Now I want to stay with the "official" binaries of the Debian project
> because I plan to evaluate if it is really that good for a server as
> everybody is telling me.
> It should get a server with only the minimum of programs that don't
> belong to the dedicated task, like in this case "run a PG server".
> Especially I don't want any development stuff like gcc on this server
> for security reasons. So I can't build it myself - at least not with
> this box.
>
> BTW ... the Debian installer had an anonymous option "SQL server" and
> installed PostgreSQL 8.1.8 as default without further question. This
> is cool because I - being a known pessimistic - expected to find
> MySQL. ;-)
>
> Do you know where I find PG 8.2.4 and pgAdmin 1.6.3 binaries for
> Debian 4.0.x ?
Hi Andreas,
I have spent the last couple of weeks looking at Debian 4 as a GIS
workstation using PostGIS, GRASS, GEOS, GDAL/OGR, Proj.4, QGIS, etc. I
figured it was worth a look because I'd heard so many good things about
apt vs yast for package management & the Debian GIS group is realy
trying to provide a good GIS capability in this distro.
I don't really wanna get into distro wars, so this is simply my opinion,
but I had lots of issues with Debian, especially in that I needed some
of the latest versions of several packages, which I built from source
anyway, just as on Suse. I am currently using OpenSuse, but also
use/have used Ubuntu, Mandriva, Kubuntu, Fedora, SLED & SimplyMepis so
I'm not too fixated on any particular distro, just use what seems
easiest for me at the time.
It was great having pretty recent versions of GRASS, PostGIS, etc
installed & working very easily, but they weren't the versions I needed,
I tried Ubuntu & simplyMepis to see if the setup tools, etc, made
things easier, but these were not compatible with the Debian
repositories anyway (kernel panics on trying to start after auto updates).
I've gone back to OpenSuse 10.2, as I don't see YAST package management
as very different to apt, the number of supported packages is certainly
much less, but it just works better for me.
As far as a GIS workstation is concerned, I'd say that if you need to
build from source to get current versions, Debian has no real
advantages. If you want to get something working quickly & easily, but
don't need the latest vesrions, Debian works well.
Cheers,
Brent Wood