Which distro should Ubuntu be based on?

[lux]

It looks like Debian is dying (http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7543606709.html) and Ubuntu needs to choose another distro to become based on. So which do you want it to be?

[Anonii]

This thread is made of fail and linux-watch faggotry.
Debian is alive, my son. And will stay alive. And even if it died, Ubuntu would always be based on Debian, because Debian is made of win and geniusness.

[raublekick]

i... don't think debian is going anywhere anytime soon...

debian doesn't really have anything to aspire to be, which is what makes it so good. all it is trying to be a solid distro, not the desktop leader, nothing flashy. Is anyone really going to be miffed if Debian doesn't make it out on Dec. 4th? Or Jan 4th? Or really even Feb. 4th? I mean, Debian is a slow development distro, why the hurry? Yeah, they want to get Etch out, but I don't see how it's going to die anytime soon, especially since it's not in financial trouble and volunteers don't really seem to want to leave en mass.

[ComplexNumber]

debian is far too far up its own politics obsessed derrier to be going anywhere from here onwards.

[IYY]

If there is any distro that'll never die (not likely), it'll be Debian. Besides, pretty much every problem described in that article is solved by Ubuntu.

[PriceChild]

At the end of the day, Ubuntu doesn't depend on Debian.

We may take patches from them, and send them back, but we're fine.

[astoltz]

At the end of the day, Ubuntu doesn't depend on Debian.

Doesn't Ubuntu start life as Debian Sid? I know this was the case in the past but maybe Ubuntu has grown past that point. Where did Edgy start?

[prizrak]

At the end of the day, Ubuntu doesn't depend on Debian.

We may take patches from them, and send them back, but we're fine.

Except that Ubuntu is basically Debian unstable with polish...

[Bloodfen Razormaw]

This thread fails.

[lux]

Debian has several advantages to offer. It has, generally, quite good quality; lots of packages; good dependency handling; debconf to set the configuration of the most important applications after install, and it advocates free software (although not everyone considers this last point as a plus). But there are also other nice distributions out there. Maybe you'd prefer to see Ubuntu based on some other disto?

Slackware, for instance, is the oldest existing Linux distro. Slackware tries to modify the software it packages as little as possible.

Gentoo has also lots and lots of packages and it can manage dependencies. And Gentoo is a non-commercial distro, just like Debian.

Arch Linux is a smaller distro than Gentoo but it has a nice package management and it has binary packages that are optimized for newer hardware than Debian's or Ubuntu's packages.

And there are the RPM distros -- SUSE, Mandriva, and Fedora. These have better GUI tools for system configuration than Debian. Newbies love GUI tools. And many application developers provide RPM packages that you can download directly from the developer's web site. The downside used to be (and it still is, as far as I know) that you need to download and burn the CDs for each new release. With a Debian-based system you can just do "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade" and your system gets upgraded to the latest release.

I just thought to ask if people here think that one of those distros (or maybe some other distro that I failed to mention) would make a better base for Ubuntu. I'm not saying that Ubuntu couldn't go its own way without Debian but it might just be easier if Ubuntu devs didn't need to start from scratch. They could build Ubuntu on some other distro and then just add the polish that users like.

So what do you think? Which distro should Ubuntu be based on if not Debian?

[Buffalo Soldier]

Debian may be facing some hiccups here n there. But that's nothing unusual. I personally think Debian will be here to stay for a long long time.

[The Noble]

Debian won't die... It just can't. It's like a cockroach really (except much prettier). There are hundreds if not thousands of people working for debian, even if it dies a main force would still exist. At the very least the developers would form a new distro or help with those currently working well (Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, etc). Also, if debian died, it's not like the work put into it would die, just nothing would move forward from the debian base.

[vayu]

:-k

[argie]

I think we should stick to Debian. I remember Red Hat 9. RPMs, dependencies, oh the horror!

[der_joachim]

Debian is there to stay. Yes, they run somewhat older versions of software, but that is because they were thoroughly and exhaustively tested. If you want more cutting-edge versions, you will have to use unstable, which is pretty decent as well.

However, and this is solely my own opinion, Debian as a desktop OS is slowly losing ground. There's quite a few desktop distro's now that are Debian-based, and which have made greater advancements in the desktop than Debian has. Kubuntu 5.04 worked better out-of-the-box than Sarge on my laptop. Kubuntu was more polished as well. I always carry a Knoppix LiveCD for emergencies.
Is this a bad thing? I do not think so. I love Debian for it being a rock solid server OS, which it was meant to be. I love its package management system. I love its stability, security and ease of administration. I do not want to part with Debian. At home and on my workstation, however, I prefer Kubuntu.

[Mathiasdm]

It looks like Debian is dying (http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7543606709.html) and Ubuntu needs to choose another distro to become based on. So which do you want it to be?
People always say Debian is dying.
Why?
Because development is slower than with other distributions.
However, it's kinda logical, seeing as Debian is a rock-solid distribution.

For people wanting a Linux server, there are 3 options (yes, there are others, but these are the 3 'big ones'):
-Debian
-Slackware
-Gentoo

Slackware doesn't have the package management, and Gentoo has long compile times (though that's not really too much of a problem).

When it comes to servers, I consider Debian the king:p (This is, of course, excluding BSD. Haven't used it, so I can't judge.)

[tseliot]

Debian may be facing some hiccups here n there. But that's nothing unusual. I personally think Debian will be here to stay for a long long time.

+ 1

Debian is NOT dying

[insane_alien]

ubuntu has grown beyond debian. it branched from debian and is no longer debian. if debian died for some reason it would not mean that ubuntu would die or have to be based of another distro.

[cunawarit]

I think we should stick to Debian. I remember Red Hat 9. RPMs, dependencies, oh the horror!

I really know very little about Linux politics, other than what I read I'm clueless...

But I do agree with that sentiment, apt is GREAT! I tried Fedora and I really wasn't a fan of rpm.

[Gargamella]

i am not an expert user, but if ubuntu has always been on Debian, i think it will hardly change, i think they will develop it themself instead of change it

[PriceChild]

Ubuntu is its own distro. We don't need Debian.

We couldn't just *swap* the base even if we wanted to though!

That would require a completely new system built from the ground up.

[Sef]

Debian's management style is management by anarchy it seems. Things get done; the boat get rocked; but in the end it survives because it is flexible enough to bend but not break, and strong enough to hold fast in a storm.

[viciouslime]

I've only been a 100% linux user for about 6months now, but I have dabbled with it a lot for the last 5 years or so and at least once a year I have seen threads based on articles telling everyone how debian is going to die; nothing ever changes with it though.

Debian is pretty strong as far as distros go and it seems no matter how many people predict its gloomy demise, it really isn't going to happen.

If, however, they finally got it right, then I think ubuntu is quite strong enough to stand on its own now and it would probably be fine just carrying on where debian left off.

[prizrak]

Ubuntu is its own distro. We don't need Debian.

We couldn't just *swap* the base even if we wanted to though!

That would require a completely new system built from the ground up.

Dude Ubuntu could not possibly survive without Debian. It is 100% dependant on all of the tools and software that Debian provides. If Ubuntu were to move to a different base it would have to basically start from scratch. Even if Debian gets dissolved their work won't go away so Ubuntu would have to get more devs to work on the parts that Debian is working on now. There is no such thing as a dead project in the FLOSS world.

Also people been claiming that Gentoo is going to die soon since it's inception and it's a lot smaller than Debian.

[darkhatter]

People always say Debian is dying.
Why?
Because development is slower than with other distributions.
However, it's kinda logical, seeing as Debian is a rock-solid distribution.

For people wanting a Linux server, there are 3 options (yes, there are others, but these are the 3 'big ones'):
-Debian
-Slackware
-Gentoo

Slackware doesn't have the package management, and Gentoo has long compile times (though that's not really too much of a problem).

When it comes to servers, I consider Debian the king:p (This is, of course, excluding BSD. Haven't used it, so I can't judge.)

-Red Hat
-Red Hat
-Red Hat

do you live in a hole or something, outside of the "Linux world" Red Hat is Linux.

Debian isn't dying, The only way a distro can die is if no one wants to use it.

[Mathiasdm]

-Red Hat
-Red Hat
-Red Hat

do you live in a hole or something, outside of the "Linux world" Red Hat is Linux.

Debian isn't dying, The only way a distro can die is if no one wants to use it.
Sorry, I must've expressed myself incorrectly.

I was talking about the hobby world here :p You know, the folks that keep their own file servers and such.

Now that you mention it, it is kinda silly of me to forget Red Hat :oops:

[gnomeuser]

I think we should stick to Debian. I remember Red Hat 9. RPMs, dependencies, oh the horror!

You are comparing apples and oranges, Red Hat 9 was released in March 2003. If you want a fair comparison compare the situation between Dapper and Fedora Core 5. Strangely when you do that, magically all those issues go away, why? Well because the problem isn't the RPM format, dependencies is a second layer resolver and that comes in the form of Yum, Up2date, apt-rpm, etc. Also with time the 3rd party repos have consolidated and grown to a size where it can compare to Debians (although better maintained if you ask me).

There's a reason the biggest Linux deployment ever, One Laptop Per Child is based on Fedora, it's a damn solid and well maintained platform. If Debian ever dies or slows down so much that in reality Ubuntu is keeping it alive (thus Debian = Ubuntu), I think it would be absolutely in everyones best interest to share a codebase with Fedora. That and maybe replace both RPM and DEB with rPath' Conary system since that brings with it real innovation in the package management system, from both a user and a developer point of view.

Cooperation is key, we all win if we work together rather than spread lies and hatred.

[chaosgeisterchen]

Unity between all the major distributions could take Linux development to yet another stage of success.

We have capabilities to rival Microsoft but Linux is often stopped by conflicts inbetween the user base.

[prizrak]

For one Fedora Core is just as bloated as RHEL and is not the best distro to base anything on. Choosing an OS for OLPC doesn't have much to do with the quality of it. SuSE and Mandriva (intentionally leaving out Ubuntu) are just as stable and easy to use. IMO Gentoo would have been a better choice since it can be tweaked fairly extensively for the hardware.

On topic, if Debian "dies" Ubuntu won't need to change it's base, it will just have to work on the part that Debian provides right now. I'm also sure that quite a few of DD's would go to work on Ubuntu.


Unity between all the major distributions could take Linux development to yet another stage of success.

This has been beat to death, short answer no it wouldn't.