JeffS
December 28th, 2005, 05:48 PM
I first tried Ubuntu with Warty, and liked it a lot. Ubuntu Warty was my first full introduction to the power of apt-get and Debian, and I was impressed. I had previously tried Mepis, but it was not (and still isn't) fully compatible with Debian repos.
But since Ubuntu gave me a really good taste of Debian, I started trying out lot's of other Debian based distros, along with Fedora, and various installs of Mandrake/Mandriva (which rocks), and Slackware, and of course, pure Debian Sarge. Along the way, I started liking other Deb based distros better, for various reasons (features, installer, hd detection, whatever). I also liked pure Debian Sarge better for a while.
However, during this process, I noticed that there were major quirks to both pure Debian and Debian derivatives. First, the Derivatives are always based on either Debian testing or unstable, or a mix of both. This leads to problems with updating or simply adding new software. Something will be incompatible, or apt-get will try to uninstall stuff, or the repository will be in flux, and your system will become borked.
With Debian pure, you get a less polished installer (even though it's polished), and you get a system that needs a bit of tweaking to get full desktop bliss, and you get software that is a bit out of date.
But now that I've installed Ubuntu again, I've really noticed, and come to appreciate at a deeper level, it's attributes.
First, Ubuntu takes a snapshot of Debian Sid, the main system and software and repos, and tests it and freezes it (other than security updates or bug fixes). This is huge, and can't be underestimated. This completely solves the problem of compatibility when doing updates or installing new software. You never have to worry about your system becoming borked. Everything "just works".
Second, Ubuntu is probably the best representation of Gnome out there, and I like Gnome slightly better than KDE. Everything is well optimized, put together, and configured. And the Human them is quite nice, and original.
Third, the whole system "just works". Other than video detection with Debian's Discover (which can be solved by using xdebconfigurator with kudzu), the system is installs easily and everything is well detected and configured. It's a great out of the box system.
Finally, the Ubuntu community is as good as it gets. Other distros, particularily Mepis and PCLinuxOS, have great communities as well. But I've watched the Ubuntu community really grow, and it has always remained extremely friendly and helpful.
Ubuntu is great stuff.
But since Ubuntu gave me a really good taste of Debian, I started trying out lot's of other Debian based distros, along with Fedora, and various installs of Mandrake/Mandriva (which rocks), and Slackware, and of course, pure Debian Sarge. Along the way, I started liking other Deb based distros better, for various reasons (features, installer, hd detection, whatever). I also liked pure Debian Sarge better for a while.
However, during this process, I noticed that there were major quirks to both pure Debian and Debian derivatives. First, the Derivatives are always based on either Debian testing or unstable, or a mix of both. This leads to problems with updating or simply adding new software. Something will be incompatible, or apt-get will try to uninstall stuff, or the repository will be in flux, and your system will become borked.
With Debian pure, you get a less polished installer (even though it's polished), and you get a system that needs a bit of tweaking to get full desktop bliss, and you get software that is a bit out of date.
But now that I've installed Ubuntu again, I've really noticed, and come to appreciate at a deeper level, it's attributes.
First, Ubuntu takes a snapshot of Debian Sid, the main system and software and repos, and tests it and freezes it (other than security updates or bug fixes). This is huge, and can't be underestimated. This completely solves the problem of compatibility when doing updates or installing new software. You never have to worry about your system becoming borked. Everything "just works".
Second, Ubuntu is probably the best representation of Gnome out there, and I like Gnome slightly better than KDE. Everything is well optimized, put together, and configured. And the Human them is quite nice, and original.
Third, the whole system "just works". Other than video detection with Debian's Discover (which can be solved by using xdebconfigurator with kudzu), the system is installs easily and everything is well detected and configured. It's a great out of the box system.
Finally, the Ubuntu community is as good as it gets. Other distros, particularily Mepis and PCLinuxOS, have great communities as well. But I've watched the Ubuntu community really grow, and it has always remained extremely friendly and helpful.
Ubuntu is great stuff.