Re: amd64 into mainstream
On 4/18/05, Ed Cogburn <edcogburn@hotpop.com> wrote:
> > I full agree here: Ubuntu is more attractive to the average end user.
> > But I do not understand why everybody is so upset about this. After
> > all, there is no "one size fits all" distribution.
>
> No, I'm not saying Ubuntu will kill Debian or vice-versa, or anything like,
> but I am saying that the more energy and momentum for a desktop system Ubuntu
> takes from Debian, the longer it will be for Debian itself to get its act
> together on the desktop, because everyone who wants to see Debian on the
> desktop are now saying "Why not just use Ubuntu?", and are moving to it.
It seems to me that this misses part of the real problem.
As far as I can see, the main merit of Ubuntu isn't anything to do
with "desktop" support, but rather to do with the fact that it is
several years more up to date than Debian/stable.
I find it ludicrous that Debian/stable still has PostgreSQL 7.2.1 as
the "latest official" version of PostgreSQL even though there have
been a whole ream of security updates and other fairly severe bug
fixes in the binary compatible 7.2.x series. And despite the
PostgreSQL project getting accused of having long release cycles, that
doesn't even touch the fact that there have been three _MAJOR_ release
cycles (7.3.x, 7.4.x, and 8.0.x) since then.
And I usually _am_ something of a curmudgeon on stability of releases;
at work, we never wound up touching 7.3.x because by the time we were
ready to consider an upgrade from 7.2, 7.4 had been out for a while.
And we're now just starting to _think_ about 8.0 upgrades...
I am running Debian/unstable on my desktop pretty happily; I just find
it painful that the "stable" release is so woefully out of date.
It may well be that there is room for two systems:
1. Debian, as the "grand collector of package updates," and
2. Ubuntu, as the folks that actually create release candidates on
some reasonably regular schedule.
--
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/linux.html
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him
absolutely no good." -- Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)
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