hiya from debian user

[gambarimasu]

hi,

just joined. thinking of switching to ubuntu from sarge (plus a few packages from an older etch).

not sure which forum to ask my questions in to make the final decision. i might try the forum that seems to be a gateway to the user mailing list.

mostly i like the 6 month release cycle with periodic syncing to debian and the seeming helpful knowledgeable friendliness of people.

mostly i fear fewer truly maintained packages (tor is said by upstream to be not maintained in ubuntu universe, but it is maintained in sid) and the issue of longevity of debian-per-se vs. debian-based.

mostly i wonder whether i want kubuntu (i use a customized kde) and whether the distro will be as scriptable as debian is (i prefer the shell especially for admin).

mostly i am considering switching because firefox, tor, and privoxy can't really be upgraded without upgrading libc6 slightly, which might not be a good idea, or upgrading to etch or sid, which i hear are kind of broken for the next few months.

so hi! and maybe i will assimilate into your borg.

[teaker1s]

you can install kubuntu-desktop if you want the full experience or you could just install kde which would give you a more basic and pure kde.

ubuntu has to be the best I've tried

[Raoul Duke]

Sid may be broken, but not as broken as Ubuntu...I'm thinking to go back...

I came to Ubuntu Breezy a couple of weeks ago. Some things I like very much about it, but I can tell you that even when Sid was at its most unstable - after the release of Sarge - it was rare to have programs crashing. Breezy, on the other hand has some really flaky components - Font manager crashes, Firefox crashes, Rhythmbox crashes, to name a few. Multimedia is poor...for one thing the Mozilla plugins for realplay and Totem are garbage and you cannot edit Mozpluggerrc to make plugin stuff run in the full-blown player as you can in Debian. Sound quality seems poor in Breezy, but perhaps that is just something I haven't worked out yet.

Anyhow, I like the effort overall, but I originally came over bacause I was told thaqt Ubuntu was a more stable version of Sid. It is not.

[gambarimasu]

Anyhow, I like the effort overall, but I originally came over bacause I was told thaqt Ubuntu was a more stable version of Sid. It is not.

i was hoping it would be an easy decision, but didn't realize there were problems with crashing with breezy. i wonder why that would be?

also, do most people use ubuntu as a pointyclicky distro, or is it also good for people who prefer cli for just about everything?

(hmm ,how do you do ">" style interstitial quoting in this forum thingie anyway?)

[AllenGG]

Hi gam..
Breezy at first is a little "flaky", but by adding neccessary components that changed, for me anyway.
Since Ubuntu is based on Debian, there's not much of a switch. And I had to use "apt-get" to install the infamous "libdvdcss2".
But I've noticed that overall Ubuntu, for me "Gnome", works well and ver-r-r-ry fast.
Just installed 5.10 on a friends' machine, that a tech had assured him that it was cooked. It works well, he's a newbie, a really happy.:razz:

[gambarimasu]

yes, it seems like a lot of people are very happy. it just seems strange to me that breezy would crash more, if the point of it is to sync every 6mo and improve it from the sync point.

i just tried posting to the Ubuntu Users Mailing List Thread, but it wouldn't let me. is it possible to post to that one, or do i need credentials i don't have yet as a new member?

[raublekick]

the mailing list threads on here are pulled from the actual mailing list. it is still meant to act like a mailing list (via email), but the forum provides a nice way to read it.

[arpunk]

i was hoping it would be an easy decision, but didn't realize there were problems with crashing with breezy. i wonder why that would be?

also, do most people use ubuntu as a pointyclicky distro, or is it also good for people who prefer cli for just about everything?

(hmm ,how do you do ">" style interstitial quoting in this forum thingie anyway?)
Its however you want it to be, you can easily install fluxbox and aterm, and go 100% CLI, its up to you. I use gnome as desktop manager, but i have my terminal open all the time, cannot live without it, and sometimes i even dont start x because i dont need to. Ubuntu is as good as you want it to be ;)

[flopsy]

I've switched from Debian unstable (user since 2002). There does seem to be much more of a Ubuntu user community (as opposed to a Debian dev community). Ubuntu feels a bit less "bare-metal" than Debian. You don't get cutting edge stuff as quickly though, which is a downer.

So far, the only thing that's crashed on me is firestarter (iptables GUI), but the last time I used it in sid, it was pretty flaky anyway. I've certainly had worse from sid (crashy nautilus springs to mind).

Difference between Debian and Ubuntu? The best example I can think of is libgphoto2. With Debian you had to read README.Debian and do this and that. Ubuntu does it all for you.

All in all, your choice depends what you want from your OS.

[SilentCacophony]

I run Ubuntu Breezy mainly, but also have Debian Sid on another partition.

I personally haven't had any crashing problems on ubuntu at all. I would guess that one may have something misconfigured if it were a problem...

Overall, I find it easier to get things working as I like them in ubuntu.

Also, ubuntu is fine for shell users, so long as you can deal with it's use of 'sudo' rather than logging in as root (though you can configure it for that as well.)

I also have a customized 'light' version of ubuntu on another partition, built from the 'server' installation method, in which I *must* do most things from the shell, because I left out all of the graphical admin tools purposely. :)