Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala

[Thomas Milne]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 11:30 AM, Matt London <lists-aILacZ9cc/a1Qrn1Bg8BZw at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Thomas Milne wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 11:02 AM, Madison Kelly <linux-5ZoueyuiTZhBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>> Lennart Sorensen wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Nov 04, 2009 at 01:06:50AM -0500, Rajinder Yadav wrote:
>>>>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/03/karmic_koala_frustration/
>>>> Yet more evidence against fixed release dates.
>>> Oddly enough, I still think it's a beautiful release and heads above 9.04. I
>>> guess the lesson here is; For best results, backup and re-install. :)
>>>
>>
>> This is going to sound like a troll, but I am honestly trying to
>> understand. I've tried Ubuntu, and it was nice. But in the end I
>> looked at Debian and thought 'it's as good or better, and I'll never
>> have to reinstall again, or at least until I get new hardware'. At
>> that point it was an easy choice.
>>
>> Surely the Ubuntu install is no easier than Debian, especially for
>> experienced users like yourself. I don't remember anything from Ubuntu
>> that I can't get on Debian.
>>
>> So, what is the advantage to using Ubuntu?
>>
>
> Firstly - I'm new to the list, so "Hi" :)

Welcome to Fantasy Island ;)

> I've used both, for desktop, laptop and server usage. The main reason I
> hear for Ubuntu over Debian is age of packages - Ubuntu tend to push
> through newer releases a lot more quickly than Debian. Theoretically
> this means that debian/stable should be a more stable distro, but a lot
> of the time on the desktop you end up running testing or unstable, just
> because you want a version of some piece of software that's a little
> more up to date.

I am running Debian Testing, with Unstable sources and apt pinning. I
am running Gnome 2.28, which is the same as Karmic Koala. So yes,
Testing/Unstable appears to be about equivalent to current Ubuntu.
Trouble with Ubuntu is, though, in the end if I want to keep up with
the latest software, I have to wipe and reinstall every six months. I
can't imagine anyone looking forward to that with any great sense of
longing ;)

> So in theory at least, Ubuntu should give you a distro with less change
> of breakage than debian/unstable, whilst giving you more up-to-date
> packages than debian/stable. In practice, this usually tends to be the
> case, but every now and again, things break.

Running a mixed Testing and Unstable system, I've never experienced
one single serious breakage. I think the most serious bug I've
experience was that the screensaver stopped working, and I had to
power off my display manually for a couple of weeks til it was
resolved. If I wasn't so damned lazy I probably could have sped that
process up by checking bug reports.

> Also, the Ubuntu folk seem to be a little less zealous over non-GPL
> software.
>
> Personally, I don't prefer one over the other - it's all a matter of
> horses for courses.

That's what I'm trying to figure out, I don't see the course that
would give Ubuntu the edge. I could possibly see very new users being
drawn to Ubuntu because of some of the minor enhancements to easing
the software installation process and so on, but for an experienced
user I just don't see it.

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