Ubuntu first time

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Jan 09, 2012 at 07:30:33PM -0500, Alejandro Imass wrote:
> No man, you can't assert that just like that. We use Ubuntu on a daily
> basis and for much more than just simple stuff. I did find 11 to be
> somewhat broken and I waited until 11.10 to upgrade from 10.10. Same
> thing we've done since we started using it circa Ubuntu 5.04
> 
> We've used Debian stable extensively as well, a bit befor Woody,
> though for the past few years we've migrated all our Internet servers
> to FBSD. We are currently using Debian mostly for embedded solutions
> and for deployment of VMs.
> 
> We also used Gentoo and Slack in past but not anymore.

I haven't used slackware in many years (not since the time it was about
the only choice).  Gentoo to me has always been a complete misguided joke.

I can't honestly take any of the BSDs seriously anymore.  They are just
so outdated compared to Linux.  I used to use netBSD but haven't for
about a decade now.  There simply is not reason to.

> Again I have to disagree. It may not work for you, but it works for
> us, so I must vouch in favor of. I'm not saying is the best distro by
> any means, but our particular needs to get laptops working quickly and
> get stuff installed easily it works. For example, try and get Android
> devel env on Debian stable, close to impossible or very quirky. Simple
> stuff like OpenProject or a decent version of any package. Again,
> Debian testing is different, but still some apps tend to be very old
> as well. Debian unstable is just unsuable, so for apt-based distro
> you're probably left with Ubuntu as a better choice. Not for every
> application, but great for getting the job done.

I have less trouble running Debian unstable than probably most people
running stable releases of other distributions.

> Most Linux software works well and officially supported with Ubuntu
> (e.g. Skype) so it's become some sort of standard. For example, we run
> a team of developers that work both in Mac OSX and Ubuntu and deploy
> on FBSD. i don't want my programmers to spend hours getting somewhat
> later versions of open source packages that are very updated both in
> MacPorts and FreeBSD, so Debian in that sense started getting in the
> way.

Debian has backports that work great, but Debian stable is very much
intended to be reliable not up to date.  Similar to what Ubuntu does
with LTS to some extend.  The Debian CUT idea could very well be nice
if it gets going.  CUT being 'continuously usable testing'.

> Yes and no. Maybe if you use testing, but stable is simply too
> retrograde to be very useful as a workstation. As a server, it's
> usually great and very stable and secure, yet it has had it's share of
> problems there. One thing that drove me a bit away of Debian is that
> their concept of patching stuff to Debianize it seem a bit extreme and
> over zealous. Rememebr the OpenSSH fiasco for example.

Why does a workstation need to run the latest of everything?  Tons of
people still run XP.  Clearly newest is not what most people want.

> In conclusion, none of Linux distros are perfect, but you can't say
> Ubuntu is a bad distro. IMHO it has probably done more than any other
> distro to get Linux on the map. It's not meant as an inflammatory
> comment and get into a distro war, but I think we must be fair and
> objective with our comments here.

Until they drop fixed release dates and start aiming for quality releases
instead, I will continue to say it is a bad distribution.  Fixed release
dates have never worked for anything and never will.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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