Week 13 - Two Linux Distributions

 Comparing openSUSE to Debian

Origin-

  • openSUSE
    • Started August 3, 2005.
    • Enforces/commends the use of free software whenever possible.
  • Debian
    • Started August 1993 by Ian Murdock with the goal of a new distribution which would be made openly, in the spirit of Linux and GNU.
    • Started by a group of Free Software Hackers.

Target group-

  • openSUSE
    • The distribution for sysadmins, developers and desktop users.
    • Aimed for beginners and veterans alike, ideally perfect for everybody.
  • Debian   
    • Individuals who would want a stable release of Linux.
    • Organizations, large or small..

Community-

  • openSUSE
    • IRC communication between community on irc.freenode.net (#opensuse-project and #opensuse-community)
    • Public Beta-Testing
    • Open Bug tracker
    • Public Mailing List
    • Open Status Meeting
  • Debian
    • Almost a thousand active volunteer developers, who help the Debian project during their spare time. Communication between the developers is mostly done by IRC or a mailing list.
    • The project has a carefully designed structure:
      • Officers
        • Leader
        • Technical Committee
        • Secretary
      • Distribution
        • Development Projects
        • FTP Archives
        • Backports
        • Release Management (QA/Release Team/Testing)
        • Cloud team
        • Auto building Infrastructure
        • Documentation
        • etc.
      • Communication and Outreach
        • Data Protection Team
        • Publicity Team
        • Web Pages
        • Community
        • Events
        • etc.

Software-

  • openSUSE
    • Community Packages
      • Packman
        • Contains 1800+ packages for users
        • Great, accessible interface
      • Guru
        • Nearly 1000 packages
        • Backported
  • Debian
    • GNOME desktop
    • GNU R
    • Packages:
      • Administration Utilities
      • Databases
      • CLI
      • Daemons
      • PHP
    • And many more..

Final Conclusion

Both distributions have their own pros and cons. A big pro for openSUSE is it's Tumbleweed distribution combined with its open bug tracker. It is updated very fast for any vulnerabilities found in the system. Updates are done almost daily.

Debian on the other hand has existed for a while longer than the SUSE counterpart and has proven to be stable and usable without too many critical vulnerabilities showing up.

If you are working in the security sector and with critical data day to day and need to store it locally and you want to use Linux, openSUSE seems like the most favourable choice here. Otherwise, as always, distribution matters little, what matters is what you are comfortable with.

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