Re: "I do consider Ubuntu to be Debian" , Ian Murdock

["Michael M." <mcubed@slashmail.org>]

On Thu, 2007-03-22 at 06:34 -0400, Michael Pobega wrote:

> I didn't mean "seemed" in a way that I didn't know. I actually went to
> the forums everyday, and there WAS at least three topics about
> dist-upgrades breaking going from Dapper to Edgy, or Edgy to Feisty.
> Dist-upgrades to break here, but we hear about them maybe once a week.
> 
> I am 100% SURE that Ubuntu's dist-upgrade breaks more often than
> Debian's, and I am certain that the number is 75% or so (Give or take
> a bit, 75% is an estimation, not a number written into stone).

Well I would think Ubuntu's dist-upgrade *would* break more often than
Debian's, since Ubuntu has so many more of them!  :-)  Ubuntu releases
every six months, Debian maybe every two years, if we're lucky.  That's
a lot more dist-upgrades.

One advantage Ubuntu offers is long-term support for Dapper.  An Ubuntu
user could have been on Dapper for almost a year now, stay there, and
still be way ahead of Sarge and pretty much on par with Etch.  All that
without hearing the tiresome "you shouldn't be using testing/unstable
unless you're prepared to deal with breakage" warnings you hear around
these parts all the time.  Etch has been quite stable for months and in
that respect I don't see any particular advantage to using Dapper over
Etch, but Ubuntu has given users the option of using Edgy since last
October, and it's ahead of Etch.  Personally, I'm getting a little
frustrated being stuck on Gnome 2.14 when 2.18 has been released.  Etch
is two Gnome releases behind already, and Etch itself hasn't even been
released.  But I'm not so frustrated that I want to run Sid, because
I've tried that and I find it too difficult.  (The big Python policy
fiasco last year pretty much turned me off Sid -- that, and the general
pace of updates.)  OTOH, upgrading an entire system every 6 months isn't
much to my liking either.  In general, the "testing" release of Debian,
whatever it happens to be at any given time, seems for me to be the best
compromise between all-around "up-to-dated-ness" and stability, except
when Debian goes into its bi-annual epic feature freeze that ends up
delayed and extended beyond all reason.  That's when other distros start
to look more attractive, Ubuntu included.  I've tried numerous others at
various times and the only ones I've liked almost as well are Arch Linux
and Ubuntu, but for one reason or another I've returned to Debian.  One
day I'll probably get frustrated enough that I won't.

All that is to say that Ubuntu serves a purpose, and it's a valuable
one, IMO.  It's not for everybody; nor is Debian, nor any other distro
in particular.  Ubuntu at least provides an experience quite similar to
Debian while doing things that Debian stubbornly refuses to do, like
sticking to a schedule.  On that score, I agree 100% with Ian Murdoch --
Debian is missing a big opportunity.


-- 
Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions
of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to
dream." --S. Jackson