Re: Why does Ubuntu have all the ideas?
On Fri, Jul 28, 2006 at 10:57:05AM -0600, Katrina Jackson wrote:
> I am sorry I am a Troll. I guess I was too harsh. But I guess these are my
> main resons for writing.
>
> A.) Ubuntu seems to have such better Hardware support I wonder if people
> are only packaging, not working on Hardware support.
>
> B.) Out of a fresh installation, Ubuntu has so many features that are
> immeadiatly seen, like my notifier example, that make your life easier I
> felt, "Ubuntu really cares about it's users, they make there life so easy."
> When I install debian I didn't see as many features to make your life easy.
> I wondered if you guys cared about the User's experience.
Again, what users are you talking about?
I am *glad* that Debian doesn't install this by default. It would be an
annoyance and a security question to me, not to mention consume
unnecessary disk space.
Think about it -- if you manage dozens, hundreds, or thousands of Debian
machines -- few of which even have a monitor -- how useful is this?
Debian is all about not making assumptions like this. If you want this
feature, you are free to install it.
I like the fact that a base Debian install is only 100MB. Most of
Debian's competitors are 10 times that.
Again, remember that your desires as a user can be quite different from
those of others. Debian has flown in the cargo hold in a space shuttle.
Do you think the people that built that machine cared at all about a
pop-up update notifier? Do you think that they would want the latest
and greatest, or something that was known to work well?
If you think they would want the latest and greatest, think again.
If you manage systems in which a few minutes of downtime can cost
millions of dollars -- and I'm sure there are more than a few people
like that reading this list -- your priorities are different. You'd
rather have something stable than something flashy.
If your job depended upon your operating system working as designed,
which would you choose? Would you choose an OS that puts all the latest
flashy things in it? Or an OS that is tried and true, where people are
known to go years between reboots?
This is the real world, and there are real people out there with
requirements like this.
If you are eBay, and you absolutely must have your website up at all
times, which do you care about? The latest kernel or the most stable
one?
Please try to expand your horizons and realize that your use case is not
the only one, and not even the most common one.
> C.) I admit Ubuntu gives a lot of Hype about their new features, but at
> least those features make the user OS experience better. The only hype I
> see from Debian seems to be, more packages!!! As if packages are only
> important. Not making nice features for users.
I'd say that Debian's big wins aren't the number of packages it has.
It's that the system is stable, well-designed, tightly integrated, and
predictable. These are extremely valuable things.
> I'm sorry if I am a troll. I was just tinking, why do you have suce little
> desktop/laptop support. Do your users who uses those machines not as
> important to you.
It's just that these users aren't a huge majority in Debian.
I run Debian on laptops and desktops just fine.
Debian's great strength is that it can run on everything from a $200 PDA
with no disk and little RAM up to a multi-million-dollar mainframe.
Your use case falls somewhere in the middle of this vast expanse. It is
by no means the only one, and your goals are at odds with the majority
of Debian's users.
> I'm sorry if I've offended people, but can none you guys relate at all
> to my concerns?
It's not that we can't relate to them. It's that you are asking Debian
to alienate all of its other users in order to turn itself into Ubuntu.
Let Ubuntu care about users that want Ubuntu and let Debian care about
users that want Debian.
The day Debian becomes the OS you want it to be is the day I switch to
something else, because it will cease being a useful general purpose
operating system.
Note that I also believe that Windows is not a useful general purpose
operating system.
-- John
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