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Ubuntu vs. Debian: What Canonical Doesn’t Want You To Know

Debian 93 Comments

“Debian and Ubuntu. Ubuntu and Debian. How are they different? How are they the same? Well, most of the differences lie in the target userbase of the OSes. Debian is attempting the unattemptable by making a distro that’s right for almost every use imaginable. Servers use it, workstations use it, monkeys I’m sure could use it too. That comes at a price.” More here.

About The Author

Eugenia Loli

Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.

Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli

93 Comments

  1. 2006-08-13 12:00 am
    ma_d

    I think Ubuntu offers forums because the typical, slightly technical, user of today is far more comfortable with forums than mailing lists.

    And what forum software today doesn’t offer all the features he mentioned? And then why shut them off?

  2. 2006-08-13 12:18 am
    Cloudy

    I’m still trying to figure out what Cannonical is supposed to want us “not to know” about Ubuntu and Debian.

    As far as I can tell, the writer is upset because Mark Shuttleworth spent money figuring out what people wanted, and then spent more money giving it to them, and the people liked what they got.

    • 2006-08-13 5:50 am
      DevL

      Hey now, didn’t you see that “The real difference is if you want to be Joe or if you want to be someone whose name isn’t Joe”?

      This blog/article/whatever is a load of crap. I really don’t understand what this bloke has against Ubuntu. Obviously he’s trying to stir up some storm in a tea cup. Perhaps he’s on Microsoft’s payroll as he’s obviously working along the lines of divide and conquer?

      I for one embrace any and all alternatives to the Evil Empire.

    • 2006-08-13 8:59 am
      butters

      He didn’t need to spend money figuring out what people wanted. It was obvious, and it had been more quite some time:

      For over a decade, Debian has been the most capable, extensive, and stable of the free Linux distributions. Unfortunately, the project leadership, release management, and community has consistently prevented Debian from achieving its primary goal of being the universal Linux distribution.

      When Mark took a look at the state of the Linux ecosystem, it was plainly obvious that Debian needed new leadership, a new release management procedure, and a vibrant community. He realized that reforming the Debian project from the inside was futile, that a whole new project was necessary. That’s where the money entered the equation.

      Mark’s investment in Ubuntu had long odds at best. I don’t think that he could have expected the kind of success that Ubuntu has had, and even still he doesn’t plan on seeing any net return on investment for several more years. The only explanation is that, as a skilled investor, he saw tremendous value in Debian that wasn’t being realized effectively. He knew that fixing the problems with Debian would pay off eventually.

      In the back of Mark’s mind, I think he expects that eventually, most of the contribution to Debian will come from Ubuntu. Debian will never go away, but Ubuntu will drive the project. Ubuntu is not so much a fork of Debian as it is a fork of the Debian Project–a much more successful fork.

      • 2006-08-13 2:36 pm
        n0xx

        You know, I think the question that’s yet to be awsered is if Canonical will be ditching the Debian Social Contract in the long run and turn Ubuntu into a commecial distro mutch like Red Hat. I haven’t actualy read the thing but I shure as hell dont like the idea of selling out Freedom for a buck, so to speek.

        It never crossed my mind before reading this guy’s blog entry (that i realy didn’t agree with anyway but that would be another post alltogether) of the implications of a user migrantion from Debian to Ubuntu, beacause Debian is a comunitary distro, without volunteer work it stagnates and “dies”. Ubuntu on the other hand will be around for as long as there’s money to pay developers. so tha’s a none issue for them.

        I fear that the day will come when Debian is “dead” from the lack of userbase and a caring comunity, and if that day day actualy comes Canonical will have all the freedom in the world to turn Ubuntu into “Something Better” by forcing wierd-unholy-drm-eula like stuff down the Joe “Uncaring” User throat.

        Shure Ubuntu has its credits to, the comunity is vibrant and well organized around a centralized oficial forum and compensive wiki.

        Debain’s single biggest problem is IMHO organic. I’s outrageous how a project so relevant such as debian, that on top of all is a comunitary project and as sutch depends on a top notch web interface and information extchange among the various elementens of the said project, the comuniy, has been working for so long with sutch an indadequate and outdated back end. Would it be so hard to restructure the whole damn website and implement a forum?

        To sum up, IMHO:

        – Ubuntu kicks ass, but Freedom is a price to high to pay.

        – Debian could 0wn, instead being 0wned by Ubuntu.

        – The secret of Ubuntus sucess is markting, smart package selection, great web framework.

        – Debian is beeing 0wned because it lacks all of the above.

        – Debian must survive.

        – I think i’ve just burned my tost.

        My 3 cents.

        • 2006-08-13 3:52 pm
          zerblat

          Ubuntu would continue no matter what Canonical decides to do: http://www.ubuntu.com/news/UbuntuFoundation

          I don’t think the lack of a web forum is Debian’s largest problem. IIRC, ubuntuforums.org wasn’t started by Canonical or any core member of Ubuntu, but by some random Ubuntu user. There used to be a forum at http://www.debianhelp.org , but it seems to be dead. http://www.debian-administration.org is alive and kicking though.

          Maybe Debian’s problem is the gap between Debian Developers and users, and all the obstacles you need to pass in order to become a DD. OTOH, that process does, at least to a degree, ensure the quality of Debian developers. I’m not sure why you feel that the Debian infrastructure is outdated. The mailing lists, the BTS and Alioth seem to be working okay. Perhaps you could say that Debian as a community and as an organisation focuses on the developers, while Ubuntu has a lot more focus on the users.

          BTW, I’m not usually a speling nazi, but could you at least try proof reading your comments once? Almost every single one of your sentences contains multiple spelling errors or typos. It makes reading a lot more difficult to read.

          • 2006-08-13 7:52 pm
            n0xx

            Maybe Debian’s problem is the gap between Debian Developers and users, and all the obstacles you need to pass in order to become a DD. OTOH, that process does, at least to a degree, ensure the quality of Debian developers.

            That’s not what’s at stake here. What’s at stake its the relevance of Debian to the worldwide comunity, and how the comunity reacted to the arival of a user friendlier Debian. I for one know lot’s of guys that migrated from Debian to ubuntu, but hey, none of them are developers, so who cares anyway. /sarcasm

            Nowerdays Debian is still server oriented and does a great job in that department. But the day will come when Ubuntu will be just as stabe as Debian. And then, the kids that now checking out Linux for the first time, the IT professionals of the future, will choose Ubuntu over Debian because that’s what they have allways used and feel right at home in. I’m just concerned with the preservation of the species. ;)

            Ubuntu would continue no matter what Canonical decides to do:

  • 2006-08-13 5:29 pm
    SEJeff

    I think some people (yourself included) don’t really

    understandwhat Ubuntu is really about. Mark is a

    nationalist and loves South Africa. They don’t

    have the capital to pay for lots of Windows

    licenses to Microsoft. He wants them to have a

    high tech IT infrastructure as you have to in

    this age to be competitive.

    Debian is GREAT and very stable. However, it needs some

    serious work on polish and integration. To work on this,

    he started a nonprofit organization and gave them $10 Million.

    Currently, Mark is funding Ubuntu out of his own pocket.

    All he wants to happen is for it to fund itsself and

    continue on to greatness.

    All of the people who believe Ubuntu will kill Debian

    and become evil are sadly misinformed. Take a look at

    how the Shuttleworth Foundation is funding open source

    initiatives in the African education system. Not

    everyone is evil and out to get you, occasionally,

    there are decent people who want to spread their blessings

    to others. Mark Shuttleworth is one of those people and

    is helping Linux on the desktop worldwide.

  • 2006-08-13 5:59 pm
    superbenk

    I fear that the day will come when Debian is “dead” from the lack of userbase and a caring comunity, and if that day day actualy comes Canonical will have all the freedom in the world to turn Ubuntu into “Something Better” by forcing wierd-unholy-drm-eula like stuff down the Joe “Uncaring” User throat.

    This really is a silly comment. If Debian dies, Ubuntu dies. Or at the very least, Ubuntu has to *become* Debian overnight. What many Ubuntu *users* don’t seem to get is that Ubuntu directly benefits from the *enormous* development community Debian has. Sure, Debian isn’t the most polished & exciting distro out there, but there are a TON of extremely capable developers making it reliable, stable & capable of being used as the foundations for distros like Ubuntu. This Debian development community makes it possible for Ubuntu’s developers to focus on user interface & usability issues without spending all their time on the boring internals.

    I don’t think this attitude that Ubuntu is a replacement for Debian is universal, but I do fear many don’t get that it’s an *extension* of Debian in such a way that without Debian, there would be no Ubuntu (certainly not on a 6-month release cycle). I would very much like to see a distro that maintains a 6-month release cycle while providing the extroardinary stability and consistency of the Debian distro *without* Debian. It just doesn’t exist.

  • 2006-08-13 12:19 am
    FlipmodePlaya

    “Face it, you install Debian, you get a Gnome that’s more or less the default Gnome install from the Gnome project. Ubuntu instead has a pretty, shiny brown interface”

    It’s worth mentioning that Gnome, KDE, etc. put a lot of thought into the default themes and settings for their desktops. The fact that Ubuntu customizes them is fine, but don’t get the impression that Debian’s default Gnome is in any way basic or ignored.

    Nonetheless, the article is decent and the concluding question is a valid one (though we’ve all been asking it for a year or two now):

    “So, I’m going to more or less ask the question, is Ubuntu’s success really due to the OS itself or the successful marketing of a highly branded version of Debian? And more importantly, with this in mind, is Ubuntu getting far too much press for what it is?”

    • 2006-08-13 12:27 am
      twenex

      Yes, it sounds like this guy is complaining because Ubuntu is “Linux for Windows users”. But since Windows infects 90+% of computing desktops worldwide, if he wants Linux to succeed, maybe he should just put up with it instead.

      • 2006-08-13 1:21 am
        anonymousbrowser

        It would be nice if Ubuntu could remember its roots and try to avoid damaging Debian though.

        I don’t understand why the default GNOME install is less attractive to users than that horrible brown thing ubuntu lands them with, the GNOME theme and iconset are both very clean fast and professional.

        • 2006-08-13 2:18 pm
          BluenoseJake

          I’ve never understood why Ubuntu is hurting Debian, they post back thier patches, I’ve installed apps from Debian repos and they have worked, seems to me that the relationship between them is not as bad as people make it out to be. If I am incorrect, please feel free to educate me.

          • 2006-08-14 6:00 am
            Rugmonster

            I’m no authority on this, but apparently, Ubuntu gives back patches that Debian can’t use due to their language policies and other things. I would search it out, but it’s late and I need to get to bed.

    • 2006-08-13 1:03 am
      ThawkTH

      Nobody has to be happy about it, but Ubuntu has done what Debian has never been able to do – be accessible and attractive to the average Linux user. Hell, I wonder how many users of Ubuntu know it’s based on Debian?

      Debian is a solid, stable core – it has a wonderful package management system (I often wondered if Ubuntu would be nearly as great without it…). Maybe all Ubuntu did was release Debian Simple ‘N Customized, slap a pretty name and some marketing behind it, and call it a distro.

      In the time since, however, Ubuntu has grown a huge and vibrant community, and has begun to stand on it’s own, develop it’s own tools, etc.

      At the same time, I think interest in Debian was waning and contention within the community threatening to tear it apart – if Ubuntu can give some of itself back to Debian, perhaps we’ll all benefit.

      • 2006-08-13 6:51 am
        l3v1

        and has begun to stand on it’s own

        If you think so, then take away all Debian testing/unstable packages from them for their next release, see what they could come up with. It’s nice they make customizations and make the average user experience smoother, still, however you hide that Debian tatoo on your ass, it’s still there.

        • 2006-08-13 6:55 am
          ThawkTH

          I said it has begun – it’s begun going in it’s own direction, creating it’s own packages etc etc etc. It has many of it’s own developers, a community, and it’s beginning to give back.

          I never said it was a standalone or independant distro. Ubuntu without Debian is Linux without GNU.

  • 2006-08-13 12:49 am
    Mitarai

    One word:

    jealousy

  • 2006-08-13 1:17 am
    lulin

    “The real difference is if you want to be Joe or if you want to be someone whose name isn’t Joe.”

    Oh, so I’m stupid as soon as I use Ubuntu… Well, I used Debian before, but I like that when I install Ubuntu, I don’t have to configure for hours or days until my PC is usable as a desktop system.

    Ubuntu does have not much more than pretty, preconfigured interface, but it is just what so many people needed.

    • 2006-08-13 1:37 am
      axel

      “Ubuntu, I don’t have to configure for hours or days until my PC is usable as a desktop system.”

      how often do you install debian/ubuntu that this is actually an issue. i was under the impression that both were capable of rolling releases, one install should last years.

    • 2006-08-13 1:45 am
      miksuh

      “Well, I used Debian before, but I like that when I install Ubuntu, I don’t have to configure for hours or days until my PC is usable as a desktop system. ”

      That’s not nesessary in the Debian Sarge either. It’s not as hard as you try to make it look like. most of the stuff is almost identical in the Ubuntu and Sarge. Installing software is identical etc. just look eg. those instructions in the Unofficial ubuntu guide. That stuff is installed the same way to Debian, only repositories are different.

      I would also like to point that most of the Ubuntu’s graphical configuration tools are GNOME-tools, which are also available for the Debian. You don’t need to configure or install everything from the command line, you can use synaptic and all those gnome tools. Ofcourse there will always be things which are better done from the commandline, or with text editor. But that’s same in the every distro. When you become more experienced you start to use the commandline anyway, because it’s faster and more poerful than any desktop.

      I have nothing against ubuntu, but i really don’t understand how debian sarge is so much more difficult?

      Edited 2006-08-13 02:04

      • 2006-08-13 5:21 am
        macisaac

        I think a large part of why ubuntu caught on as it did, was the fact that in the early releases it came with this great installer, ncurses based, that did things that up till then debian woody, potato, etc., didn’t, ie. sane autodecting of hardware and all that. The word spread to it being debian made easy, etc, and kind of flew off from there.

        One thing about that great installer though…. it was debian’s, i.e. the sarge installer that _debian_ developpers had been working on and to that point was in beta. Alot of folk (other than the one’s of course who’d actually used what was then the beta installer and could clearly see it was just the same thing) didn’t know that though and the credit seemed to have gone to the ubuntu folk. This might also explain some of where the so-called “sour grapes” mentality from the debian people stems from.

    • 2006-08-13 7:01 am
      l3v1

      Well, I used Debian before, but I like that when I install Ubuntu, I don’t have to configure for hours or days until my PC is usable as a desktop system.

      Well, that sums up pretty much what a Debian user the commentes has been. For the contrast, I can show you a Debian sid system that was installed about 5 years ago, changes in configuration occured when smaller or larger hardware parts were changed, surviving several complete hardware swaps beneath. None of these were painful, nor hard to manage.

      That said, I know that there are Ubuntu users who have high technical skills. No question about that, and they all have their reasons for choosing one OS or the other. But the larger user base of Ubuntu is most certainly not them, but that is _not_ bad. Ubuntu has managed to become a fashionable distro for newcomers and less-knowledgeable, which can introduce them into the Linux world. And there’s one aspect there that is more important than the others: fashionable – if many people talk about it, many people brag about it, many people advocate it, the most probable that newcomers will choose it over the others. They won’t know or care about the Debian roots, nor will they try Debian soon.

      All this is _not_ bad, it’s good. The only issue I generally have against Ubuntu is the hidden goals of profit making and the lack of a mission statement which even distantly would resemble Debian’s core philosophy. That is, nobody can be certain money issues won’t come into the picture.

      And one more, some say Ubuntu is now standalone, not depending on anyone, and that’s crap. Without Debian’s restless developers Ubuntu wouldn’t be anywhere, and wouldn’t be able to release a new major version anytime soon.

  • 2006-08-13 1:34 am
    rm6990

    “He made the core of his OS Debian Stable (remember there’s only one Ubuntu branch), and then merges it with the latest from Unstable for every release.”

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but this guy doesn’t know what he is talking about. Ubuntu doesn’t use Debian Stable (Sarge) for its base. I don’t think it EVER has used Sarge for its base since Ubuntu launched.

    Apparently Ubuntu is also a cult because they offer a full forum with avatars and everything!!! First avatars, next they’ll be drinking sheep blood!!! Oh noes!!! ;) Because we all know everyone whom doesn’t get tech support via a mailing list is an evil cult member…

    Next he claims that Ubuntu’s “prettiness” is forming a cult. Could it not just be that people don’t like using ugly software, so Ubuntu decided to make Gnome not ugly? Then he states that the Ubuntu logo is EVERYWHERE!!!, listing a whopping 3 places in the OS it is located, those 3 places probably taking less than 0.1% of a user’s time actually using the OS. He is right that Ubuntu could lose the jungle beats though.

    And last but not least, the Ubuntu logo…. I’d say it’s a pretty obvious logo, considering what Ubuntu stands for.

    He doesn’t actually tell us what Canonical doesn’t want us to know…he was probably too busy making himself sound like a raving lunatic. Could these things Canonical doesn’t want us to know just be a figment of his noticably screwed up imagination?

    OSAlert editors, do you even read this garbage before you post it? This is bloody pathetic for a tech news website… Has anyone even found this article interesting yet?

    • 2006-08-13 1:41 am
      the_leander

      “Has anyone even found this article interesting yet?”

      I did, but not for the “technical” reasonings as to why ubuntu is the spawn of satan, but rather the attitude of the author. To me personally I found it a huge insight, one which I’ve seen quite a bit of lately.

      Use what you want and what works, be it ubuntu, suse, redhat, debian or the miriad of other cool distros out there, be happy with your choice, and get on with the job you intended to use it for…

      • 2006-08-14 10:54 am
        Terracotta

        All the author is saying is:

        debian is the same as ubuntu

        except Ubuntu looks prettier, now, if the underlying systems are the same, the prettiness is the deciding factor. Why going to debian when you gain no technical advantage and loose the looks?

  • 2006-08-13 2:13 am
    zerohalo

    I don’t see Ubuntu and Debian competing with each other, since they have different appeals. Ubuntu is great for the user, who could be your “average Joe” or could be a professional power user, who wants to mostly *use* the system rather than *tinker* with the system. Debian, like Gentoo, is more for those who like to tinker, have the latest packages available to them, and have fun getting into the guts of things. (Naturally I’m generalizing here.) And Debian stable is great for servers since it’s rock-solid and you don’t have to worry about anything breaking.

    But to say that Ubuntu users are all the “average Joe” is uninformed and quite slanted. Not to mention that the differences between Ubuntu and Debian run deeper than just a discussion forum, avatars and a brown Gnome skin, as the author would want us to believe.

  • 2006-08-13 2:35 am
    poohgee

    Yeah smart marketing indeed .

    BTW ubuntu.org : world forum of civil society networks .

    Not related I hope but make the mistake of just typing it in & you can still feel good about Ubuntu & its “we come in peace” & “we want the best for you” message .

    “Linux for human beings” – instantly irritates me – suggesting that i must be alien for not using their distro & that other distros must suck .

    Indeed that picture .

    It all does remind me a bit of the Jehovas witnesses & their “Watchtower”.

    Lovely pics of HARMONY & PEACE ON EARTH in them as well .

    Im way to cynical for this kind of manipulative crap .

    “”Ubuntu: – an African word,meaning humanity to others” or “I am what I am of who we all are”

    The Ubuntu distrobution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.””

    How f****ing noble of them .

    Am I all “ethnic” & so aware of other cultures by using Ubuntu ?

    If you meantion Africa how about mentioning problems as well – or do we not want to confront with reality – but instead submerse the community in “cultureaware PCness”

    This kind of marketing is the opposite of what I see as an important part of the open source community .

    That picture & that African saying (does it xist ?) suggest Western polical correctness & introducing that into the OSS community which actually is global not just based .. wait .. cool .. on the Isle of Man – UK .

    Canonical Ltd.

    1 Circular Road

    Douglas

    Isle of Man

    IM1 1AF

    The Ubuntu marketing strategy seems to be forcing that PCview onto open source software users which is a western thing onto a global community.

    AFAIK other distros market themselves for technical reasons not pseudo-political & PCness .

    The Opensource community to me is independant of the cultures that make up the community – aware of its global nature – something Canonical seem to ignore in a way IMO .

    Just IMO ;)

    Edited 2006-08-13 02:48

    • 2006-08-13 7:28 am
      IMesh

      It could be an African word because, oh I don’t know… THE GUY WHO MADE IT IS FROM SOUTH AFRICA?!

      Edited 2006-08-13 07:29

    • 2006-08-13 12:06 pm
      diskinetic

      Hmmm, you say:

      “Im way to cynical for this kind of manipulative crap.”

      Then later, you say:

      “The Opensource community to me is independant of the cultures that make up the community – aware of its global nature…”

      So, we need to cynically transcend the “manipulation” of the Ubuntu idealism, but instead buy into an idealist “culturally agnostic” globalism of OSS.

      Hey kids, SWITCH Kool-Ades.

  • 2006-08-13 2:46 am
    bosco_bearbank

    Q1: So, I’m going to more or less ask the question, is Ubuntu’s success really due to the OS itself or the successful marketing of a highly branded version of Debian?

    A1:To paraphrase the Clinton campaign of 1992, “it’s the OS, stupid.”

    Q2: And more importantly, with this in mind, is Ubuntu getting far too much press for what it is?

    A2: Who cares?

  • 2006-08-13 2:48 am
    JMcCarthy

    Everyone who uses Ubuntu must be an idiot, forums, nice looks — all for the mentally challenged, no man could appreciate it! — </sarcasm>

    The article smells of borderline Luddism, what next? Mark Shuttleworth is really a Goa’uld?

    Edited 2006-08-13 02:48

  • 2006-08-13 3:17 am
    zizban

    Has this guy ever used Debian? 15 CDs worth of software; I guess you could say that if you download and burn every single package.

    Debian is meant to configured the way you want it; you can do it during install or after. Apt-get makes package installation installation a breeze; like if you get a window manager that has, let’s say a root menu to be configured, it will be done automaticly.

    Debian is designed around freedom: freedom to install what you want, when you want and only what you need. Debian isn’t aimed at anything but it can be anything.

  • 2006-08-13 4:30 am
    stephanem

    – No root login

    – No C compiler by default – flies in the face of open source – atleast Solaris and FreeBSD give you gcc when you install the base system

    – Kernel compiled with GCC 3 and compiler installed is GCC 4 so no NVIDIA driver from Nvidia’s site will install

    – basically trying to figure out what packages to install for software development is a mess

    – fundamentally a bogus UNIX!

    • 2006-08-13 4:50 am
      DittoBox

      1.) BS. sudo passwd root. Voila, instant root login.

      2.) apt-get build-essential. What do Solaris and FreeBSD have to do with Ubuntu no having GCC installed be default? They’re completely different animals.

      3.) In point 2 you claim there’s no GCC, but now you’re saying it’s a different version than that which built the kernel. Make up your mind, and while your at it tell me how many people install the nvidia driver from their website instead of via synaptic or apt-get? Even if they did you can still grab GCC 3 via apt-get or synaptic.

      4.) OK. I’ll give you that. Sort of. See, most Ubuntu users aren’t going to dig straight into development, if they were they’d know how to and what to install wouldn’t they?

      5.) WTF makes you say that?

      • 2006-08-13 4:19 pm
        stephanem

        1) LMFAO does my grandma know how to do this?

        2) Why no point-and-click-wizard? Ubuntu was meant for the desktop, no? Not only do BSD/Solaris get it right, SuSE/Mandy/Redhat derivatives get it right

        3) Because when you do apt-get install gcc it install GCC4.0 and the kernel is compiled with GCC 3. – that is bogus!

        4)

        5) Cause it sure ain’t windows or MacOS! ;)

        • 2006-08-13 5:05 pm
          h-milch-mann

          2) Pure genius. Point and click for tools that are useless without the commandline most of the time.

          3) Check your facts. This is not true for dapper any more. The kernel ist build with gcc 4.0.

    • 2006-08-13 4:54 am
      JMcCarthy

      – sudo passwd root (why you’d want to do this, beyond me)

      – It’s easy to install GCC ;) It doesn’t conflict with Free Software / Open Source ideals –at all–

      – I’m not saying this is true, but even if it were you should be using the nVidia modules provided. They’re up to date.

      – If you don’t know what packages / libaries you need for ‘software development’ via Synaptic then you are not a developer ;) Note there is a Development section in the list, in fact, three if you have uni,multi repos.

      – You’re right, it’s not UNIX. It’s Ubuntu ;)

    • 2006-08-13 4:57 am
      2fargone

      Just want to point out that Linux is Unix like, it’s not Unix. Ubuntu is a Linux distro, thus it is not a “fundamentally a bogus UNIX”. Agreed with you otherwise. Personally, I was turned off of Ubuntu when I used it. I prefer PCLinuxOS myself, tho it seems to be fading now.

    • 2006-08-13 2:32 pm
      BluenoseJake

      I’ve had Nvidia drivers install just fine, perhaps it is something you are doing?

      Synaptic and adept both show installed apps, and can be sorted in numerous ways, to allow you to see what is installed, pretty quickly and easily.

      Maybe you should do some real research before posting?

      • 2006-08-13 4:21 pm
        stephanem

        > I’ve had Nvidia drivers install just fine, perhaps it is something you are doing?

        The one’s from Nvidia’s site? Sorry boss, there IS NO WAY IN HELL YOU CAN EVER INSTALL THOSE DRIVERS without installing the kernel sources, removing gcc 4 and installing gcc 3, preparing all kinds of links to the right kernel source and preping the version numbers. In essence you have to perform 20 steps manually before you can get Nvidia’s open source shim to compile against Ubuntu’s kernel.

        NO SUCH PROBLEM EXISTS WITH FC, SuSE, Mandy, RH

        Edited 2006-08-13 16:23

        • 2006-08-13 5:00 pm
          orestes

          I’m trying to think of a compelling reason why anyone would bother doing that instead of just using the binaries Ubuntu provides.

          I suppose it’d be valid if you were in a hurry to get the latest driver for some reason, but otherwise I’m just not seeing it.

          • 2006-08-13 5:15 pm
            stephanem

            How about that I don’t TRUST ubuntu’s binaries?. WHY should I TRUST Ubuntu with an NVidia Binary?

          • 2006-08-13 8:06 pm
            orestes

            If you’ve got trust issues with unknown binaries, why are you using the Nvidia drivers in the first place? Or, for that matter, any binary packages from every other distro on the planet?

          • 2006-08-13 11:40 pm
            stephanem

            I trust Nvidia’s engineers MORE than Ubuntus. Who knows where there’s a disgruntled Debian programmer trying to sink ubuntu? ;)

            Since Nvidia’s drivers are binary, I’d trust a binary coming from Nvidia.com ANY day over a binary coming from some random server in the world.

            Edited 2006-08-13 23:41

          • 2006-08-13 6:14 pm
            Cloudy

            I needed to install from NVIDIA at one point because they had released a blob with a bug fix for an obscure dual monitor problem and the blob hadn’t made it into the ubuntu distro yet.

            I’m still installing from the NVIDIA installer for that reason on FC5.

        • 2006-08-13 5:12 pm
          h-milch-mann

          Sorry boss, there IS NO WAY IN HELL YOU CAN EVER INSTALL THOSE DRIVERS without installing the kernel sources, removing gcc 4 and installing gcc 3

          Completely uninformed and false statement! Nvidia builds fine with gcc-4.0. Dapper kernel is build with gcc-4.0.

          Stop spreading FUD and stop screaming. Thanks.

        • 2006-08-13 6:13 pm
          Cloudy

          Sigh. You don’t need the kernel sources, just the right header set. You don’t have to remove gcc 4, it’s possible to install gcc 3 and leave 4 in place, and the nvidia install will handle that.

          As for “NO SUCH PROBLEM”, FC5 switched to X11R7, so not only did you need to install kernel headers, you needed to play interesting linking games to fool NVIDIA’s installer into thinking it was install into an R6 system but having it install so there were links from the R7 tree to the actual installed code. Took me three days to debug that one.

        • 2006-08-14 2:18 am
          BluenoseJake

          Sorry Boss, you are wrong. it’s that simple.

        • 2006-08-14 2:20 am
          BluenoseJake

          Actually, maybe it is because I had already installed gcc 3, I can’t remember the order, so I am willing to entertain that you need gcc 3, which is a checkbox in synaptic, but I don’t have any kernel headers installed, nor did I have to do any weird linking. I just downloaded and followed the directions.

        • 2006-08-14 3:21 pm
          leech

          Step 1) sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential module-assistant

          Step 2) Download nvidia drivers from website.

          Step 3) sudo module-assistant

          Module-assistant will prepare (basically creates a symlink for /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r` to /usr/src/linux) then you can just run the nvidia installation script.

          Wow, a whole 3 steps, certainly not the 20 you’re talking about. If you’re running Breezy Badger (which had the problem about GCC 4 being default and the kernel being compiled with GCC 3, and is now fixed in Dapper Drake) is easily fixed by installing GCC 3 and then changing the symlink from 4 to three. So that still is only 5 steps.

          By the way, this is the same method you can use for ANY kernel driver that you need to compile. In fact, if the sources for the kernel driver are already in the sources repository, you can just use Module-assistant and it’ll fetch and build whatever module that is a -source package (like nvidia-sources). Oh and it’s so evil to use the binary from Ubuntu? Look inside the package, you could even md5sum the binary bits of the module or look at the nvidia-sources directory. It’s the same thing as the nvidia driver from the nVidia’s site.

          Now that someone has actually posted something useful to this thread, hopefully this spreads (and of course the same method works under Debian, though you can just use su on debian instead of sudo.)

          • 2006-08-14 3:39 pm
            stephanem

            Step 1) sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential module-assistant

            Step 2) Download nvidia drivers from website.

            Step 3) sudo module-assistant

            I call BS:

            Just let me just point all you fan boys to this page:

            http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/Latest_Nvidia_Dapper

            Redhat, SuSE and Mandy auto”magically” (hint it’s designed that way) do them for me when I install Linux

            Three steps are 3 steps too many in your quest for competing against Windows and MacOS. As for MD5 – do you think my mom would know what MD5 means?. After all Ubuntu’s being designed to compete with Windows and MacOS – My mom knows about Microsoft signatures on drivers (WHQL).

            Stop apologizing for bad design!. FIX IT and then come back to me about Ubuntu being uber cool.

            WOW, JUST FRICKIN’ WOW!. That many steps to install a video driver? Even Windows gets it right – Download, Click OK to accept the license, Click Next, Click OK to reboot the system and voila.

            Installing on Redhat/Mandy/SuSE is slightly easier,

            1) run software installer, click on Kernel development

            package – let it install

            2) ./nvidia-installer

            3) Reboot

            Edited 2006-08-14 15:42

          • 2006-08-14 4:08 pm
            leech

            Ok, that’s still three steps for Redhat/Mandy/Suse. You know what, if you weren’t such a numbnut, you can do the Debian/Ubuntu way in ONE freaking step. Run module-assistant. It’ll download, configure the headers and install the nvidia drivers. But NO you say you don’t trust Ubuntu’s binaries, yet you’ll trust the ones for Redhat? Guess what, they all use the same binaries, you nitwit. Like your Mom is going to know the difference between binaries from Ubuntu’s repository or from nVidia’s site?

            Bad design? one line for those that will accept that Ubuntu or Debian’s binary drivers are tested and compiled so they work. sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx & nvidia-glx-config enable. Yup that’s real hard, genius. It’s even easier than finding the driver on the net somewhere (There are many variations and a billion different beta drivers for nVidia out there) and installing them in Windows.

            Reboot? Now I call you a troll. You don’t have to reboot Linux to install an nVidia driver. You simply restart X.

            You can call BS on me all you want, I can call you a nitwit all I want. I guess others will judge who is correct. I’ve been using Debian based distros for almost 10 years. I know how to compile drivers. I was the one who first wrote a how to on compiling the Matrox Parhelia drivers for Debian as well. Not to mention I contribute tons of help on the Forums for Ubuntu, what have you ever done besides troll against Debian based distributions?

            Oh and let’s compare Mac and Windows with this method. Windows as already stated, you need to find the driver (not too difficult really) download, REMOVE PREVIOUS DRIVER (can’t stress that enough), Reboot, install new drivers, reboot AGAIN, then finally there. Hopefully it doesn’t mess up your system (though nvidia’s drivers are usually pretty good about not doing that).

            Mac OS X. Uhmm…. where to begin… oh wait, THERE AREN’T ANY nvidia drivers for that. Macs for the most part only use ATI cards, the only nvidia driver out there is for the pirated/cracked copy of Mac OS X. Macs don’t really need drivers unless it’s a external device, since the OS s made with specific hardware in mind. Windows by the way doesn’t work out of the box with Nvidia, you will be in Vesa mode completely (unless it’s an incredibly old card), at least X has 2D acceleration with the nv driver.

            By the way, you also contradicted yourself, you said redhat, mandriva and Suse do it automagically, then you say there is three steps to installing them. Oh, how the troll has been smitten.

            Edited 2006-08-14 16:28

  • 2006-08-13 4:53 am
    iMoron

    “Debian is attempting the unattemptable by making a distro that’s right for almost every use imaginable. Servers use it, workstations use it, monkeys I’m sure could use it too. That comes at a price.”

    Seriously… I don’t want a server yet, nor a workstation (thought that ain’t that far from a desktop)… But most definitly, I don’t have monkeys to help me install Debian on linux interested people’s PCs…

    Ubuntu is one CD that brings whats needed for a working “desktop” in a short time and preconfigured…

    Debian is great, but it still lacks the “desktop” frienlyness that “newbees” need. Once they learn, then we can talk…

    Once Debian’s CD#1 brings the needed packages for a fully funcktional “desktop”, then “newbees” (and even advance users) will like to use it from an start.

    Right now, to use debian for the desktop, one needs to many CDs. Even if it is relatively easy for some to configure Debian, it is not something newbees will like…

    Heck… I have use several linuxes. Curently am running PCLinuxOS… I plan on getting MEPIS (now base on Ubuntu) on my free partition along with the newer version of PCLinuxOS to see how they compare… Then again, am a distrojunky. I even want to try PC-BSD… But the one thing that I apresiate the most of any potential distro is that it comes on ONE CD, configure for the desktop… extra CDs are wellcome as extars… not required for the install.

    At least that way, for me, it make it easier to evaluate and USE… even install on friends PC and recomend… All I want is that the newbee doesn’t get frustrated by some “aparent” complication and rejects Linux completly like many have done in the begining… If they are already familiar with linux then it is diferent.

    Edited 2006-08-13 05:05

    • 2006-08-13 1:32 pm
      miksuh

      “Right now, to use debian for the desktop, one needs to many CDs.”

      No you don’t. You need just two Debian floppies. Download two floppy disk images, write those to floppies. Boot from boot-floppy and change root floppy to floppydrive when asked. And off you go, everything is installed directly from the internet (Debian server). You don’t need install cds at all. When you install directly from the internet you get latest packages so you don’t need to upgrade after install like you do if you install from the cd.

      • 2006-08-13 6:19 pm
        iMoron

        You lost it to… At least considering people with little experience/time and those with 56k connections to the internet…

        CDs are prefered for those with no net or 56k… sad I know… so in those cases, one needs more than one CD for a full Debian desktop…

        Floppies are shure to be the cleanest way to get Debian… as long as there is time and high speed internet…

        • 2006-08-13 7:18 pm
          miksuh

          “You lost it to… At least considering people with little experience/time and those with 56k connections to the internet…”

          You can get eg. 8Mbit ADSL connection with less than 50EUR/month here. Well maybe someone still uses modem, but then it’s his own problem.

          If you want to install from the cd you need to download the cd-image first. It will take lots of time to download those cd images. You can’t really download any cd image much faster than you can install directly from the net. Ofcourse you could order cd eg. from the Ubuntu site, but then you would need to wait month or more. Who wants to wait that long when you could install linux from the internet?

          For example, If one guy install directly from the internet and second guy downloads cd image. then first guy can start to install immediately. He has probably installed most of the stuff before second guy has even downloaded the cd-image. I’m supposing that both guys have similar connection to the internet.

          Then second guy has to first download cd-image and then burn it to the cd. Then he starts to install linux. BUT that’s not all. After installation he still has to download updates, even if he has only that 56k connection to the internet.

          Edited 2006-08-13 19:28

        • 2006-08-14 9:15 am
          Troels

          Floppies?!? For those with modern computers i would say net install cd image.

        • 2006-08-14 3:45 pm
          leech

          Ah hell, I was able to get a fully working Debian System in about 2 days with 56k back when I had that! Of course software is quite a bit bigger than it was back in ’01 or ’02 when I first got DSL.

          Leech

          • 2006-08-15 10:37 am
            lord_rob

            I’m pretty sure you had not to pay for your telephone calls then ;) . Hell, 48 hours of telephone call, Debian is not a free OS anymore :p

  • 2006-08-13 5:02 am
    tpaws

    I really don’t get the authors point. Maybe his whole blog is tounge-in-cheek humor? I don’t use Ubuntu. I have been using Slackware for many years, and I am very happy with it.

    Everything I see about Ubuntu appears to be polished, well displayed, and marketed in a wonderfully positive fashion. I see users who are excited and generally representative of a community. Mark Shuttleworth seems to have a better approach to getting Linux into the hands of the “average joe” than many Linux entrepreneurs. The author of the article seems to be more of a curmudgeon than a reviewer.

  • 2006-08-13 5:08 am
    paperfrog

    Worthless, insulting, and utterly subjective. Why was this troll posted?

  • 2006-08-13 5:13 am
    DittoBox

    http://techanchor.blogspot.com/2006/08/stfu-ubuntu-users.html

    I’m not going to believe anything this hack has to say. Especially seeing this trash he wrote just prior to what was posted above.

    The core audience of Ubuntu are folks who just want it to work. If I want to understand more about the underpinnings of the OS, I’ll go with Gentoo, or Debian or linux from stratch. Right now I don’t, I have a life thanks.

    I really can’t see what his problem is with Ubuntu and it’s community. He’s not really seeing why it’s popular. Instead he complains that people aren’t as smart as he is or in the least that they aren’t trying to be as smart as he is. He’s expecting them to *want* to delve into their OS and really know it. I like doing that, and that’s the reason why I used Gentoo for so long (and continue to use it on a MythTV box, because I can fix almost anything on it without really breaking anything else).

    But I’m done with it for now, I don’t have the time to tinker with my main desktop OS until it works. I want it out of the box. Sure, not everything is to my liking but I don’t have time to hack into shape or to learn how to do that. I don’t want to have to jump through a thousand hoops when I update things.

    Here’s my favorite quote:

    “These “do it all” distros need to stop.”

    Do they now? On one hand we’ve people who can’t shut up about getting linux on everyone’s desktop, then we’ve got guys like this who, once things start to get good, scream and yell about people getting help on official forums? Huh? How is that bad? Oh, they aren’t using uber-leet mailing lists like him.

    I’m left after reading these two “articles” on some nobody’s blog confused and dazed. He makes no points other than ratting on people for wanting something easy, for wanting their OS to just work.

    Here’s two real gems from the “STFU” post he made, the first at the beginning and the second at the end. Complete contradictory but he doesn’t give a flying fornication.

    1:

    “I have used Ubuntu. It is a fine OS. It’s actually a very good OS.”

    2:

    “…Ubuntu says its easy to use, yet makes you set everything up and offers no hand holding besides its virtual Starbucks. It says its meant for Linux pros too, yet Ubuntu doesn’t even ship with a compiler.

    Ubuntu = The Best Distro In The World — For No One!”

    I’ve installed Ubuntu on my laptop. I’ve only had a few small things I’ve had to do to get a few extra packages, wireless networking with WPA and hibernation/suspend working, all of which were easy to find with Google or on their forums. It is, by far, the best and easiest Linux experience I’ve ever had. It just worked, the way computers should work in my opinion.

    (PS, yeah, there are too many articles about ubuntu on Digg and the like…so what? A Linux distro worth spending time on? We’re getting tons of people interested in Linux…how is this bad?)

    • 2006-08-13 7:17 am
      l3v1

      I’ve installed Ubuntu on my laptop. I’ve only had a few small things I’ve had to do to get a few extra packages, wireless networking with WPA and hibernation/suspend working, all of which were easy to find with Google or on their forums. It is, by far, the best and easiest Linux experience I’ve ever had.

      For me, it’s not about the love or hate of some distro, it’s more about such comments. These are the ones I usually hate. Not because of their explicit content, since it’s just about how a linux distro was easy to install. But because such comments state that look distro X I installed without major problems on my laptop, and at the same time suggesting the other distro in question couldn’t manage that. Which usually isn’t true, let’s put it the other way, it’s a lie. Very many linux distros, Debian, Gentoo, Slack, even Ubuntu included can be installed on laptops or else without major hicckups _if_ the human installer knows a heck about what’s (s)he’s doing. Numerous others and myself have installed a number of linux distros on desktops servers and laptops, and all I can say from those experiences is that if you don’t know the hardware, or the tools you need to use, or the apps you need to use, or the e.g. wifi settings you need to use then you won’t manage easily. No matter what distro you use.

      Also, most problems happen to people when they just _expect_ every distro to work the same as the distro X (s)he was using. That’s the same lameness as with the sub-average windowser. I don’t want to touch a distro which is targeted to these people – note I’m not talking here about a apecific distro.

      With Ubuntu we have a distro that generally works, for most people, with average knowledge. That is a very good thing, but I think we should stay by this line and not cross it over with ignorance.

  • 2006-08-13 5:32 am
    nzMM

    The only thing about the article that stood out for me was the fact he considers the Average Joe as simple and confused …

    Ubuntu, on the other hand, has a target userbase of the thoroughly confused at this point Average Joe.

    *sigh*

    He fails to see the reality of the situation.

    People are busy … people work hard and are preoccupied with real world issues.

    PC’s are powerful tools and more or less essential to participate in the modern world.

    Given these factors, if the Average Person is confronted with a choice:

    [1] a system that is elegantly and intuitively designed, making it simple to learn and use, or

    [2] a competitor that is poorly thought out and inconsistent

    Then it is Technews who is thoroughly confused if he fails to see the rationale in making such a choice.

    The “sane defaults” issue is key.

    Edited 2006-08-13 05:37

  • 2006-08-13 7:40 am
    netpython

    The real difference is if you want to be Joe or if you want to be someone whose name isn’t Joe.

    whatever@whatever:~$

    We are what we are,hopefully all humans.The name isn’t that relevant,the actions are.

  • 2006-08-13 8:34 am
    netpython

    I like to automate as much boring repeating tasks as possible.Instead of manually editing a lot of config files so audio works and a CD is mounted automatically i install Ubuntu.for me Ubuntu is desktop-debian.In my humble opinion any user shouldn’t be bothered with trivial configurations as much as possible.So one can devote more attention to what is really important such as start using the machine as quickly as possible.Harvesting repositories isn’t very appealing either.Hence, if you want you can still use a lot from etch (debian testing) since Ubuntu is based on debian right?

    -my 2 cents-

    Edited 2006-08-13 08:35

  • 2006-08-13 8:35 am
    alcibiades

    You have to agree that for the Windows refugee Ubuntu is a far easier way to get to a working system than starting yourself with Etch. Not that Etch is particularly hard, but it is not a one or two click install.

    However, the thing to compare Ubuntu with is surely PCBSD, PCLinux or DesktopBSD? Maybe also ZenWalk and Mepis. Freespire? These are all one CD installs that try to offer the user a limited set of well chosen apps and a simple graphical install ending in a system that one can just use.

    Without having tried the very latest Ubuntu, but based on earlier versions, it is hard to see what, apart from the marketing, is better about it than the ones mentioned. Its a matter of taste largely, but PCBSD and PCLinux seem the best for the purpose of the above. The nice thing about PCL, it inherits all the Mandrake gui management tools, which are really nice for new users. The latest PCBSD is probably the simplest install one will find.

  • 2006-08-13 9:08 am
    h3rman

    I think the author simply doesn’t trust Mark Shuttleworth. He invested a lot of money, well he wants to make money out of it in selling services to companies, not to home users. Mark got rich by Linux, not every rich guy out there is evil.

    I think the author does have a point in criticising the fact that Ubuntu didn’t adopt the “no version upgrades” model of Debian. It would be great to be able to have an OS that you never reinstall but just keep up to date at all time. I hate reinstalling. ;)

    But then, Debian is simply not inviting. People do *not* want a mailing list, they want a forum. People do *not* want to have to configure their Xorg or mouse or screen resolution themselves. They would be able to do a netinstall (the 15 CD story is nonsense) but then the manual package selection should be more straightforward.

    And people are so used to the version number model, how can you blame them. BTW who said world domination was Debians goal?

    [a Fedora & Debian user]

    • 2006-08-13 9:48 am
      netpython

      Mark got rich by Linux,

      Didn’t he sell Verisign?

      • 2006-08-13 9:54 am
        h3rman

        “Didn’t he sell Verisign?”

        Sorry, I thought I had picked up somewhere that the company he got rich with used Linux servers or something. I admit I didn’t check that.

    • 2006-08-14 3:40 pm
      leech

      I think the author does have a point in criticising the fact that Ubuntu didn’t adopt the “no version upgrades” model of Debian. It would be great to be able to have an OS that you never reinstall but just keep up to date at all time. I hate reinstalling. ;)

      I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about with “no version upgrades” model of Debian. Debian is the KING of the upgrade path. In fact, if you leave your sources.list to use stable/testing/unstable you will ALWAYS upgrade automatically as soon as there is a new stable version.

      To clarify, Sarge currently is ‘stable’. As soon as Etch becomes ‘stable’ then you will automatically update to Etch when you ‘apt-get upgrade’ ‘apt-get dist-upgrade’. There doesn’t even have to be any user interaction. Sarge will become oldstable, and Woody will go into the Archives. You literally could keep a ‘stable’ release of Debian for 20 years (though with Debian’s release schedule, that’d still only be 10 different versions.) Debian Policies are in place to make the upgrade as smooth as possible from one version to the next. I have yet to see that happen with any RPM based distribution. It was bad going from Mandrake 9.1 to 9.2, but if you’re going from 9.2 to 10.1 then you’re really screwed.

      I almost always install from the Sarge netinstall then upgrade to Etch or Sid from that and it works great. There is the occasional snag here and there (python-gtk was broken last time I installed, but they fixed it shortly afterward, since they were working on a new policy concerning Python’s naming scheme (since Debian was still using 2.3 and was upgrading to 2.4, they decided to just do python-gtk instead of python-gtk2.4 etc. This was, oddly enough (to remain on topic), put into Ubuntu with Edgy Eft is well, so all the packages are now without the 2.4 at the end.

      Ubuntu and Debian DO work together.

      As someone who fairly recently tried to install Debian on his laptop, I’ve made some observations (most of them can be found in the Edgy Eft forums on ubuntuforums.org). I will say that Ubuntu is good because it will set up specific buttons on laptops (All of mine now work, even the one to disable the touchpad! There are only three things that currently do not work (haven’t looked too hard into them though) and that is my Modem (not sure if this is possible in linux, it’s a Intel HDA modem), SD card reader (supposedly support has been added in 2.6.17, but I haven’t been able to get it to do anything but notice it’s there (no devices are created when I put something in, yet dmesg prints something out… probably just a udev issue.) and lastly, my LEDs (which include one for wireless (though the button works to disable that too) and one for email notification). Everything else was detected and set up properly (even the ‘scroll wheel’ part of the synaptics touchpad.)

      Debian has a version number by the way, Sarge is 3.1r5 (at least I think they are at revision 5, but whatever, I’m too tired to look.

      Oh and when doing a netinstall, Debian has (for a long time now) used tasksel. This gives you the basic options of Desktop Environment, Mail Server, Database server, Development, etc. When you select Desktop Environment, it installs a fully working Gnome desktop, though still not quite as polished as Ubuntu’s (by that I mean what I mentioned above about the extra buttons, etc working) It’s very fast too, a default gnome install on Debian Etch screams. I may switch back to standard Debian once Etch comes out. Though I’d need to learn all the secrets the Ubuntu devs know to get all the keys, and other cool stuff working in Debian. It’s a bit more work, but I like that ‘livin’ on the edge’ feeling ;)

  • 2006-08-13 11:43 am
    Quag7

    Most of the people I hear about who use Ubuntu get to it because of discontent they’ve experienced with other distros. For example, Ubuntu suddenly detects that piece of hardware they couldn’t get working in other distros and which has caused them hair-pulling frustration (I suspect OpenSuSE has similar appeal to people with difficult hardware, having tried it for a few days on my laptop and having admired both its hardware detection and YaST’s virtues as a configuration tool for those not excited about rebuilding their own kernels).

    Or the installer makes sense to them. Or the community doesn’t resemble Dana Carvey’s grumpy old man character like parts of the Debian community purportedly do (that’s their reputation; I’m not making any comment on the veracity of this).

    …

    Me, I’m into savory and not sweet, and Ubuntu is definitely more like sugar and Debian is like really stinky blue cheese. I *like* really stinky, sharp blue cheese. I would choose it over chocolate cake any day; I acknowledge, however, that many people are the opposite.

    Debian would be listening to like, Appalachian and bluegrass music and like…Springsteen’s Nebraska maybe – maybe even like, Johnny Cash or Tom Waits and drinking Bushmills in some dive bar after but no matter how grizzled it gets after years of this, it always manages to make it into work on time the next morning. For this, it is a monument to the boundless endurance of the working man. Debian can take a punch, and it drinks its whiskey neat.

    Ubuntu would be all listening to Rusted Root or the Dead and drinking like, herbal tea and having a drum circle. I think they’re all good about getting to work now, but let’s see how Ubuntu fairs after like 10 years on tour with Ratdog and 1000 hash brownies down the road. Whatever the excesses though, Ubuntu doesn’t have the grumpiness about LIFE that Debian does. Ubuntu knows only how to love.

    Still, the chicks dig Ubuntu and Ubuntu knows how to dance like no one is watching. Debian occssionally is walking home in pale pre-dawn light and sees Ubuntu, long-haired and shirtless, and Debian grumbles to himself about Ubuntu’s bohemian excesses.

    Because Debian has been there and done that and seen it all and done it all, and has been up and down the four corners of this big old world and has suffered and endured, and Debian thinks Ubuntu with its youthful idealism and hippie peacenick vegan sandwiches with hummus and sprouts has no *character* because it has no regrets and has not suffered, nor had to endure.

    Ubuntu doesn’t notice Debian, and is keenly aware of only one thing in that pale pre-dawn light:

    The New York State Thruway is CLOSED, man.

    …

    In the end, how do we all get to the distro we call our favorite? I bet most people keep trying out distros until one “sticks” and once it does, it’s too much of a hassle to switch to something else once you know all of the tricks and tools and commands and switches for the package manager, and locations for config files. Once something works “pretty well” and you know it rote, it’s a boring thing to switch, at least for your main system.

    For a lot of people, Ubuntu is this distro.

    I have no reason to use it, but if it brings more people into the Linux world, great. I’m sure there are a lot of people for whom Ubuntu was just another distro they tried that didn’t do it for them, and they’ll keep trying others until one works the way they want it to.

    I find it hard to be objective about one thing being superior to another when our purposes, attitudes, knowledge levels, and expectations are so different.

    After about 5 years I have no reason to switch from Gentoo; I know it well, and I’m fairly happy. I also know it isn’t for everyone.

    At work I run production servers on Debian stable, because they never hiccup and I can apply updates in the space of about two minutes and almost forget about them. They work and as I have no major complaints, I probably won’t switch unless things change radically in either distro and they start to annoy me.

    The problem is the distro that works for you is presently driving someone completely insane. That it works for you has zero bearing on the fact that it doesn’t work for someone else. No matter what you run, your distribution has a latent propensity for outright dicketry.

    Ubuntu has, somehow, become the one that “just works” for a lot of people and has “stuck” for a lot of people . Cool.

    It’s still all Linux to me.

    • 2006-08-13 12:31 pm
      netpython

      After about 5 years I have no reason to switch from Gentoo; I know it well, and I’m fairly happy. I also know it isn’t for everyone.

      Do they still have the shadow is blocking pam-login issue when doing a emerge –update –deep –newuse world ?

      • 2006-08-13 3:38 pm
        kernelpanicked

        They did about as of about a month ago when I installed it on a friend’s box.

      • 2006-08-14 8:02 am
        Quag7

        I’ve heard of this problem but I’ve never experienced it. The last blockers I ran into were when I upgraded to modular X, but those were natural.

        Portage – or individual ebuilds – do annoy from time to time. No OS is incapable of dicketry, Gentoo included. But I’ve still not run into anything that has made me want to actually leave.

  • 2006-08-13 12:54 pm
    gary1979

    Well, Debian just released the newest beta installer for Etch, in which you can choose the graphical install. The net install disk is only around 150 megs or so, and you can do any type of installation from this disk. So, you don’t have to get all 15 CD’s; that is what’s required if you want all of the Debian packages on disk.

  • 2006-08-13 4:19 pm
    dogen

    The weirdest part of this weird article was how he attacked the Ubuntu logo as cultish. What does he define as a cult and how does the logo fit that definition? To me it seems to represent cooperation between people. But then there are individuals who mock all non-monetary human cooperation as “communist.” Is that what he has in mind?

  • 2006-08-13 4:21 pm
    RGCook

    The article’s title is not answered. It seems to be a condescending rant by a Debian elitist who is overtly upset that Ubuntu is paving the way.

    Ironically, Canonical has figured out what it takes to advance Linux on the desktop while the legacy elitists opine on the habits of Joe user.

    No, I do’t have Koolaid, but you do seem to be enjoying yours Mr. Tech Anchor. I suggest you let the anchor go, its dragging you down!

  • 2006-08-13 4:34 pm
    Joe User

    Come on, all the difference he mentioned make Ubuntu better. It’s not just an OS, it’s an experience, a web site, a community, an ease of use, etc…

    Yes, the logo is nicer, yes the forum is more friendly and looks nicer, yes, version numbering is more friendly for the average Joe. So? Should we stick to Debian if the overal experience is not as good?

    It seems he fails to understand that the average Joe needs all Ubuntu offers. If Debian hadn’t failed to fill out these gaps, there wouldn’t have been Ubuntu. Is he jealous? Please stick with Debian and let us use Ubuntu.

  • 2006-08-13 8:51 pm
    jgfenix

    It's preferible to an ellitist pig who despises you if you need help to do what he thinks is “something so basic that if you don't you, you are stupid”.

    I'm not an Ubuntu user or zealot but if I have to choose i would choose it over Debian not only because the distro is more friendly. The comunity is more friendly too.

  • 2006-08-14 1:38 am
    raven_

    I don’t personally like ubuntu and find its followers somewhat annoying. That said, you my friend are a fool.

    First, anyone who is technical enough to “not trust binary drivers” is technical enough to figure out how to compile nvidia drivers on Ubuntu.

    Second, you don’t trust debian devs not to sink ubuntu with a bad binary? Excuse me? A. They would have to put the bad binary into Debian first, so that would sink Debian along with ubuntu…B. Testing anyone? Do you think that they just pull packages from Debian live with no testing? Users may do that, Ubuntu does not.

    Third, you don’t trust binaries? Why are you using ubuntu at all then. Do you think the binary nvidia driver is going to do something bad that the binary kernel hasn’t already?

    Fourth and finally, many binary distross now have some sort of signature system on packages. So that whole “strange server” argument is pretty much down the drain…much like the rest of your arguments actually.

  • 2006-08-14 4:13 am
    codehead78

    Maybe they’re just upset that they don’t have as many newbies to call stupid.

    It’s not a resources problem. All Ubuntu work is sent upstream to debian. And it’s not like Canonical only employs artists to touch-up Gnome…

  • 2006-08-14 4:23 am
    ashigabou

    This article is so bad, with no content whatsoever. First, the target user hypothesis is stupid: I don’t even understand how it is a problem to target some kind of users, and then, the fact that ubuntu got certification from IBM show that some user use it for more than just surfing the web.

    I am using ubuntu for one year and a half now, after having used debian for about 4 years. The reason why I was interested by ubuntu was first the release every 6 months, in sync with gnome which is my desktop of choice. I think debian had a release problem, for reasons I understand (difficulty of the sarge installer for so many arch), but still, I wanted something more up to date, but stable.

    The problem with the way debian releases its software in unstable is that sometimes, you don’t want to change some core things (let’s say new gcc version with incompatible ABI, new fortran compiler) at “random times”. With a fixed release date, I think things are more manageable for a user like me, who uses linux to develop python+C+C++ code for scientific applications for my PhD. Also, I think the artwork on ubuntu is quite good and coherent, which would not have been a reason to change dist of course, but is a plus.

    The whole thing about ubuntu logo and so is so stupid, I don’t understand what is wrong with the guy: there is one logo on my machine, which takes maybe 30×30 px, instead of the gnome foot icon, and frankly, to complain about one logo and about the so called uber-technical user at the same time is kind of funny…

  • 2006-08-14 11:34 am
    Terracotta

    Now, I’ve read nowhere in this whole thing what Canonical doesn’t want us to know.

    They have their own “manifest”:

    it’s not as long as the debians’ but it’s a pretty clear one and everyone will have read it, whereas with debian…

    He’s spending a 10million dollars a year to this project and hasn’t gotten a cent back yet, he has never denied that he didn’t want it to become profitable, but ubuntu is always gonna be free of charge and use open source software, so where’s the catch? There is never gonna be a vendor lock-in, so one can always switch when things are gonna go bad, which I doubt they will.

  • 2006-08-14 12:56 pm
    rakamaka

    I read on some blogs that Ubuntu does not like their distro remasterd by someone. Like knoppix helped great to linux community by allowing remaster versions which changed entire senario.

    And here ubuntu imitating everything from debian and

    then don’t like others to imitate them? What a justice?

    In short, RH, mandriva, slackware and debian are trendsetters. They have created new ways of filesystems, pkg-mgt, HD interfaces and many other things.

    ubuntu is old wine(stilen from debian), in a new bottle.

    • 2006-08-14 2:32 pm
      elsewhere

      I read on some blogs that Ubuntu does not like their distro remasterd by someone.

      They would probably object to somebody using a variation of the ubuntu name, but they didn’t seem to mind Mepis moving from Deb-based to *buntu-based.

      They’re smart enough to see the benefit. Just as *buntu is based on snapshoted deb code and then updated, Mepis operates the same way. Considering Kubuntu’s support for KDE is still, uh, moderate, it can only benefit both parties, to have another project concentrate on updated KDE packages and add-ons that should ultimately be easy to backport.

      It surprises me that there is all this animosity towards Ubuntu and that this topic keeps recurring. Admittedly the fanboys are a little annoying, but beyond that I find it a bit ironic that nobody bitches about Xandros, or Linspire, or the former Libranet etc. commercializing and effectively closing snapshots of Debian. I suspect Ubuntu does far more for advancing Debian and investing back than any of the commercial for-profit spinoffs do.

      It’s hard not to suspect elitism. It seems like it’s ok to commercialize Debian as long as you don’t make a better version, but offer a free version improving upon and making it more accessible to users, then you’re doing something wrong, even if you do send your improvements back. Curious.

  • 2006-08-14 1:46 pm
    NixerX

    Use what makes you happy. Who gives a rats @ss what some bloke blogs about….Jeeeeessssus!

    -nX

  • 2006-08-14 4:37 pm
    JeffS

    I’ve done several installs of both Debian Sarge and Ubuntu (Warty, Breezy, Dapper), and in my experience, Debian Sarge was as easy as Ubuntu’s, except for the new Dapper that has the simple GUI installer from Live mode.

    But the base installer of Ubuntu is pretty much the same as Debian Sarge.

    Also, hardware detection is about the same. Both are not as good with video as other distros (like Fedora, SuSE, Mepis, Knoppix, Kanotix, Mandriva, etc), but still pretty good. Both fail to configure video on my laptop correctly. The difference is the fact that with Debian I could download xdebconfigurator, with Kudzu, and run them and have instant perfect video. I tried the same with Ubuntu, but it would not work. With Ubuntu, I would have to use Mepis’ “reinstall X” option in it’s OS Control Center in Live mode, to get a proper video config for Ubuntu on my laptop.

    Also, pretty much all of the GUI config tools that are available in Ubuntu are also available in Debian.

    So, long story short, Debian, since the release of Sarge, has become pretty easy to install and configure.

    Yes, Ubuntu might a little more polished and well packaged as a pure desktop OS, but the only real difference is branding and marketing.

    In that, I think the article makes an excellent point.

  • 2006-08-14 4:48 pm
    JeffS

    Really, the author did not say anything bad about Ubuntu, or about Ubuntu users.

    His main point is that there is not much difference between Ubuntu and Debian, technically speaking. The big differences are branding, marketing, and the forums. This is true. Ubuntu just puts a more friendly face on Debian. And that’s fine.

    But what do we get in this forum? A bunch of Ubuntu fanboys flamming the author, or anyone who disagrees with them.

    I really like both Debian and Ubuntu (and Kanotix, and PCLinuxOS, and a host of others). But liking a distro does not put it above criticism, or simply pointing out “uncomfortable” truths about the distro (like Ubuntu not being much different from Debian).

    Really, grow up people. Ubuntu is a nice, desktop friendly OS, not a cult that is above criticism.

    In fact, the only thing that I really dislike about Ubuntu are all the unreasonable fans of Ubuntu. Of all the distros, the fans of Ubuntu seem to be the most rabid. Their attitude is you are evil scum if you ever point out something they don’t want to hear about their wet-dream perfect OS.

    It’s just a distro, folks.

    • 2006-08-14 5:10 pm
      leech

      This goes for every Distribution.

      There are a few more technical differences between Debian and Ubuntu. One is that in Unstable Debian, there are changelogs constantly being updated. I swear in Ubuntu they don’t release changelogs until it’s a full release. Which is sometimes quite annoying, since generally if there is a bug within a package that you’re waiting to see if it gets fixed, then a new version comes out in the repositories, you check the changelog and what do you know, it’s not there yet! So you end up anxiously waiting the download of the new package, and the bug is still there, so you feel the disappointment. Well, ok, maybe I’m weird that I wait for updates like this, and will actually check changelogs. But really, this shouldn’t happen. Debian to me, seems like their developers are more on top and of a better quality (their packages conflict a lot less, unless of course they announce on the mailing list a week before that “we’re breaking this package to change naming conventions, etc.” but it WILL be on the mailing lists.

      One thing the article doesn’t mention, is that Debian AND Ubuntu both use Mailing lists for their Developers. The only thing Ubuntu has is the Forums, which originally weren’t even official Ubuntu forums! By the way, debianforums.org is also up and running, but just not many people in there. Maybe they got a clue from Ubuntu.. Maybe in the long run, they’ll just merge back together again. That’d be pretty sweet!

  • 2006-08-14 8:57 pm
    moleskine

    It’s a silly article but I am not as sanguine as many folks about the future of Ubuntu and Debian.

    Debian is a huge project but that means it also needs a great number of talented developers. If Ubuntu takes the limelight – people who’ve got used to it on the desktop now start using it on servers, etc. – and Debian becomes more of a backroom effort, then Debian’s staffing levels and hence the scope of the Project could be put at risk. The right, bright people might easily start to look elsewhere. And if that process started to snowball, a move generally to Ubuntu among both developers and users would be pretty big.

    In addition, there are potential conflicts of interest: for example, someone who develops both for Debian and Ubuntu puts through which set of packages first? Or, would corporate support for Ubuntu make it hard for the same corporation to support Debian?

    Personally I hope that things all work out fine, but if Ubuntu’s growth turns out to be very much at the expense of Debian then there are bound to be difficulties, even if eventually they are resolved. This isn’t going to happen tomorrow, but over the next few years?

    FWIW, I think the way Mark Shuttleworth went was the only way he had to go. There would have been zero chance of getting a desktop distro together from inside rather than outside the Debian Project.

    I use both Debian and Ubuntu, simply because I like them. There don’t have to be weightier reasons.

    • 2006-08-14 10:30 pm
      JeffS

      Those are very good points. Since Ubuntu is Debian based, it is totally dependant on Debian. If Debian sinks, it stands to reason that Ubuntu will go down with it, unless, of course, Ubuntu/Cananical pick up the slack.

      Really, all the Debian derivatives, such as Ubuntu, Xandros, Mepis, Linspire, Knoppix, Kanotix, and many others, are all just repackaging of Debian, targeted at the x86 PC, with extra GUI install/config goodies added in.

      The vast majority of the work is done by the 1000 + Debian developers. Without their awesome work, the other distros would not exist.