Ubuntu first time

[Alejandro Imass]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 3:29 PM, Christopher Browne <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 12:54 AM, Alejandro Imass <aimass-EzYyMjUkBrFWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

[...]

>> If you are a Debian user you know for a fact that Debian unstable is
>> so quirky it makes it unusable, un-usable, not-usable, or whatever you
>> wanna call it, like it's very name: unstable and hardly good for any
>> practical use.
>
> What?
>
> Debian unstable hasn't been visibly unstable in *years*.

[...]

> I have found the converse to be true, that Debian unstable is hardly
> ever quirky.
>

In the context of the complete note, my point is in the practical use,
as in "day to day" use by non hacker users. Perhaps the "so quirky"
was unnecessary noise to the argument I was making of practical use.

The point is simple: if I have to choose between Ubuntu and Debian
unstable, to get a relatively up to date set of applications, I will
choose Ubuntu. Depending on the specific scenario, I might use Debian
stable with backports, but the truth of the matter is that business is
practical, so Ubuntu is usually the most cost-effective choice.

[...]

> One might wind up compiling from source, but that's quite likely to be
> a mistake in comparison with dropping an extra entry or two into
> /etc/apt/sources.list along with some preferences in
> /etc/apt/preferences.d/simple so that you generally favor Stable over
> Testing over Unstable over Experimental.
>

Yes. Backports and apt-pinning are always an option in cases where you
need the stability/security of Debian but require some bleeding edge
version of a package. Yet, this _does not_ fall under practical use as
it requires rather specialized resources.

[...]

> Well, Ubuntu deserves a certain bit of "bashing;" it has taken some
> different choices as to the preferences used to construct it, and
> those preferences are not undeserving of criticism.
>

True. But it should be objective and preferably from the perspective
of real-world issues, not imaginary ones.

> They have made some rather controversial choices that initiate a
> pretty substantial risk that they're leaping off cliffs into
> destruction.  To some, the potentially-suicidal choices may seem a
> fine thing.  "When the dust clears, we'll still be running Debian..."

Yeah, I don't doubt that _you_ will ;-)


-- 
Alejandro Imass
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