Re: Red Hat vs Debian Linux: overall security

Debian is _huge_

cmpalmer@ltsp:~/Desktop$ cat allpackages.en.txt |wc -l
17498

...and is much more community-oriented (ie. there are vulnerabilities
in little-used apps that are maintained by a volunteer and not a paid
developer). BTW, you're talking about RHEL, right?

It would make much more sense to compare them apples-to-apples by
narrowing your focus to a minimal install plus certain very common
apps (such as apache).

I'm not saying they're equivalent in terms of security. I'm just
saying that the comparison based on www.securityfocus.com/bid is not a
realistic one.

-CMP

On 27 Nov 2006 17:44:30 -0000, tjanas@austin.rr.com
<tjanas@austin.rr.com> wrote:
> I am evaluating the overall security of Red Hat linux vs Debian.  I've been told that 
> Debian has many more vulnerabilities than Red Hat.  I've also been told that Red Hat is 
> quicker to release security patches than Debian is for the "stable" release.  
> Can someone point me to a good overall assessment of the two?  Using this tool: 
> www.securityfocus.com/bid  I see that Debian has 17 pages worth of issues but Red Hat has 
> surprisingly few.  Am I misinterpreting the results from this tool?


--
Cristobal M. Palmer
UNC-CH SILS Student -- ils.unc.edu/~cmpalmer
TriLUG Vice Chair
"There are many roads to enlightenment, and thus many roads back to
the One True Debian" --crimsun