Ubuntu: Good and Bad. (Was: 13th December "Smack Down" Meeting)

[Thomas Milne]

On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Lennart Sorensen <
lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 02:06:03PM -0400, phiscock-g851W1bGYuGnS0EtXVNi6w at public.gmane.org wrote:
> > I'd be interested in hearing some example of what you think is good, and
> > what is bad, about the Ubuntu distribution.
>
> Good: They do very much try to make a new installation pretty much just
> work out of the box for many users, especially of laptops.
>

Actually I have had more luck with 'working out of the box' with Debian than
I have with Ubuntu. Perhaps that's because in general I am using older
hardware.


>
> Bad: Good luck actually upgrading a working install to the next version
> without something blowing up.  And updated frequently breaks things
> rather badly due to lack of testing.  I remember a few years ago an Xorg
> security update took out a huge number of intel video chips, which are
> amazingly common among ubuntu users, but not very common among ubuntu
> developers.
>
> Having upgraded a Debian 2.1 install through every version so far without
> any significant breakage ever happening, I expect upgrades to just work.
> In debian they do.  In Ubuntu (and Fedora, and other fixed release date
> distributions) they very frequently do not, since there just isn't time
> to test properly and fix everything.  Meeting the release date is more
> important to them, than releasing something that always (not just
> usually) works.
>
>
Big +1 from me. I have been running Debian for 4 or 5 years now, starting
with Stable, upgrading to Testing for a couple of years, then up to
Unstable. Never once was there any breakage, the system has been 100%
working at all times.

Any time I have tried Ubuntu on any machine there have been serious
problems. Always some glitch to fix. Everything I hear about Ubuntu ends up
being just hype. So far I have seen absolutely no reason to even try
something like Fedora.

I suppose diversity is a good thing as everyone always says, but Debian
certainly qualifies as the Universal Operating System.

-- 
Thomas Milne
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