[Discuss] Debian versus Ubuntu

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2007-10-25 14:12-0700 Lloyd Budd wrote:

> Wow, that is another brilliant article! Alan, you inspire me with
> every post on what it can mean to be a member of a community.

Thanks, Lloyd.  I am going to use a new subject for this because I can
forsee the Debian versus Ubuntu "discussion" started below might get
interesting. :-)

>
> On 10/25/07, Alan W. Irwin <irwin at beluga.phys.uvic.ca> wrote:
>>
>> I have already decided after a couple years of trying it that Ubuntu is not
>> really right for my needs since it (rightly for new users) tries to hide
>> details that might confuse new users.
>
> It hides them, but doesn't disturb them, no?

Agreed.  But it is substantial extra work for me (mostly during the install
phase, but still it delayed the Ubuntu install substantially for me) to
expose the control I want on Ubuntu.  Perhaps more importantly, I like to
report bugs, and there is always some uncertainty whether the problem is due
to something Ubuntu did to their selected version of Debian (IIRC a debian
unstable snapshot that Ubuntu stabilizes over a substantial period of time)
or something Debian did (or something upstream from Debian).  I far prefer
to deal with bugs in just one place (Debian) so my bug report effort doesn't
get wasted in possible finger pointing between the Debian and Ubuntu sets of
packagers.

> I'm sure there are a lot
> of newer users in your life that would benefit from you making their
> discomforts your discomforts by continuing to directly help Ubuntu be
> a better OS.

I far prefer (for above reason) to report direct Debian bugs.  Of course, this
indirectly benefits Ubuntu.

Finally, I think that Ubuntu's approach for transforming Debian to attract
new users is working well so I wish them the best.  Recently
(http://techiqmag.com/2007/07/22/ubuntu-linux-6-million-to-12-million-users/),
Mark Shuttleworth estimated that Ubuntu had something between 6 to 12
million users. That number of desktops/laptops is incredibly important since
it helps put pressure on hardware manufacturers to release at least specs
for their hardware if not Linux drivers.  I was quite pleased, for example,
to see that the ASUS P5K-V MB website has links to Linux drivers for all the
chips on their (quite new) MB.  That reduced a lot of the Linux
compatibility concerns I had for that MB and helped to drive my decision to
include that MB in the hardware package that Edge put together for me.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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