Re: Why Debian

[berenger.morel@neutralite.org]

Le 08.11.2013 18:57, Alberto Salvia Novella a écrit :
> Note: Since I'm not subscribed to this mailing list at the moment,
> please send also a copy to my email when replying.

I think that if you had added yourself in the cc field, people using 
"reply to all" as we usually do on mailing list (I think) would have 
automatically included you to the receivers list.

> Which are the very important reasons why do you prefer Debian over 
> Ubuntu?

First, let me explicitly say that I have never really tried Ubuntu, so 
my reasons are mostly first-contact ones. Plus, they are old: the older 
one is 10 years ago, when I have no linux knowledge at all.
So, without having read other replies, here are my reasons, unsorted:
_ reputation. I was first interested by Debian because it had the 
reputation of targeting "geeks" ( the one which was used to qualify 
people with real technical knowledge of computers, and lacks of social 
aptitude. So, not with the meaning of simply spending all one's time on 
a computer by playing games ). Which, at this time, was not so wrong 
since there were no DE automatically installed, so you had to know how 
to use bash and Debian before trying to use them. This is now fixed, 
because a desktop environment is installed by default, and because you 
can choose the one you prefer.
_ I do not like gnome, and when I tried Ubuntu, it had gnome as default 
DE. I really disliked it's appearance and lack of configuration. I came 
from windows world, but most of my softwares were already free 
softwares, and they were far more configurable than any gnome's one. I 
still have that problem with the gnome's softwares I use, like dia, but 
since they are the better ones doing their job I have found, I still use 
them.
_ reliable. Debian's reputation of being very reliable is not stolen, 
while I can read lot of concerns about Ubuntu's reliability.
_ things are not hidden. I tried Ubuntu as my second contact with linux 
( right after my Debian "failure" because of the lacks of graphical 
interface ), and discovered that it was close to the windows' spirit: do 
not touch the system, do not try to understand how it works, we know 
what you want better than you. Ubuntu was already a distribution that 
hid things, where Debian did not, as I had already noticed. A simple but 
good example is the lacks of "nag-screen" when you are booting. Debian 
shows you info (but now it clears the screen when asking login, sadly. I 
should take time to restore the old behavior) where Ubuntu shows you a 
windows-like animated and useless image.
_ flexibility. Debian uses 
depends/recommends/suggests/breaks/pre-depends better than Ubuntu, so 
you have more flexibility when you try to remove something. I had that 
thought when trying Ubuntu years ago, but Backtrack5, which is an Ubuntu 
with some more tools installed, showed me this too, and it is far more 
recent: less that 3 years.

> Thank you for your help.

You are welcome.
But I do not think you can import those points from Debian to Ubuntu, 
because those reasons are the ones which makes me, as an advanced user 
which wants to know everything on my system, happy. Normal users which 
simply wants working tools, and preferably without knowing anything 
about it, do prefers having less freedom of choice, more recent 
softwares, shiny interfaces, etc. Which is what Ubuntu gives them, but 
is not always compatible with giving system's control to users.