Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala

[Thomas Milne]

On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 4:16 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh-pmF8o41NoarQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> | From: Thomas Milne <tbrucemilne-TcoXwbchSccMMYnvST3LeUB+6BGkLq7r at public.gmane.org>
>
> | Running a mixed Testing and Unstable system, I've never experienced
> | one single serious breakage.
>
> With Ubuntu, you are directed to run the latest version, with updates,
> or the latest LTS version, with updates.  That seems pretty simple.
>
> Whenever people recommend Debian, the recipe seems more complicated.
>
> Simple version:
>
> - Run stable is you want stability (and movement at the rate of tectonic
>  drift).
>
> - Run testing even though it may be unsafe.  Really, it is supposed to
>  be almost safe.
>
> - Run unstable if you "like to live on the edge"
>
> The actual recommendation from people I trust is  "run some mixture of these".
>
> How is one to know what mixture to run?  It seems like it would be a
> lot of work to figure this out correctly.
>
> Oh, and another confusion: at any one time, stable and testing each
> have a name (of a character from Toy Story).  When a new stable
> release is released, the name of the old "testing" becomes the name of
> the new stable.  But unstable is always called Sid.  So new name is
> invented for testing.  At least I think that is how it works.
>
> I don't run Debian mostly because I don't know what mixture to run and
> I don't have to decide this with the distros I do use (CentOS, Fedora,
> and Ubuntu).
>
> Continuous (as opposed to discontinuous) updating is attractive.
> Lennart seems to say that works with Debian, even when a new version
> becomes stable or testing.  But Lennart seems to be capable of easily
> solving problems that others find daunting.

I can assure you, I am nowhere near the level of experience that
Lennart has, and I have not found anything about Debian nearly as
confusing as you make it out to be. I had to ask about the version
name thing once, but Lennart must be gifted at explaining things too,
because I got it :-)

I think it comes down to what I've been hearing from most of the
responses to this thread: there's really no specific show-stopping
reason people choose Ubuntu, it seems to come down to a more general
preference for the way it is packaged, and to some slightly more
polished tools for configuration, particularly for newer wireless
hardware and such.

-- 
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