Re: "I do consider Ubuntu to be Debian" , Ian Murdock
On Mon, Mar 19, 2007 at 08:37:27PM -0300, Jorge Peixoto de Morais Neto wrote:
> >And for the people who actually want to use Linux, they will
> >eventually move from Ubuntu to Debian.
>
> I don't want to start a flamewar, but I don't why Debian is superior to
> Ubuntu for a home user.
>
I've found Debian is more ways than one to be more suitable for home
use. Ubuntu offers a new release every six months, which while some
people like upgrading I really don't. Ubuntu's dist-upgrade is broken
for the most part, and doesn't work as well as Debian's, meaning that
every six months you're almost always forced to make a choice; Risk a
dist-upgrade break, or reinstall Ubuntu's new release.
I gave up on that after an unsuccessful Dapper->Edgy upgrade, because
I realise if I really want to keep my laptop working for college (I'll
be using this next year to take notes during class), I'll need
something stable that won't break every six months (Of course I can
just not dist-upgrade, but then I wouldn't get ANY package upgrades).
Debian also offers three flavors, and two ways to use them; Since we
all use Debian I'll skip the explanation, but basically stable is good
for server use, testing is good for stable home use and unstable is
good for bleeding edge home use.
And for the two ways to use them, you can either be running "Etch" or
"Testing". And yes, those are two different things; Running "Testing"
means you'll always stay updated without having to worry about
upgrading to a new version, or reinstalling Debian, for example.
And I'm a GNU Purist, besides my wireless drivers (Which are in
contrib) I have no non-free packages installed on my system. Ubuntu
doesn't offer any differentiations between non-free packages and free
packages in their repositories, which upset me when I run my weekly
"vrms" to find that the program "unrar" was non-free. Of course now I
use the (Far inferior) unrar-free program, but I hated how Ubuntu had
no seperation between the repositories.
The Debian social contract is the main thing that won me, and I have a
friend in my Math class who also uses Debian because he loves Debian
and the way it does everything (He has been distro hopping, but always
ends up back on Debian. Even after trying Ubuntu he landed back into
Debian's arms).
Just my two cents, I still consider Ubuntu a good distro for people
who don't want to do any extensive work on their computers to use, but
I think that if you have a bit of free time for troubleshooting and
customizing and occasionally working around problems, Debian is really
the greatest distribution available.
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