Views from an Red Hat -> Ubuntu -> Fedora migrator

Lennart Sorensen lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org
Fri Oct 19 14:51:28 UTC 2012


On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 07:57:41PM -0400, Digimer wrote:
> I'm seeing a lot of consternation with Ubuntu surrounding the 12.10
> release. I thought I'd throw my $0.02 out there for people to read or
> discard as they see fit.
> 
> I started as a Red Hat user (pre-RHEL/FC split). I didn't like where Red
> Hat was going around the RH8 ~ RH9 days, so I switched to Debian. Of
> course, Debian and and always has been a server distro, so when Ubuntu
> came along in '05, I decided to give it a go.

Debian is 'the universal operating system'.  I have run it as a desktop
OS for 14 years now after I got fed up with the bugs in redhat.  It is
not just a server OS (although it is very popular for server use).

> Like many, many others, I was converted. I was a die-hard Ubuntu user
> for a long time and many non-geek friends and family still use the
> Ubuntu machines I built for them.

To me the release policy of Ubuntu was fundamentally wrong, and as far
as I am concerned the quality problems I have seen in Ubuntu have proved
me right.

> When I started going down the clustering road, I spend countless hours
> trying to make it work on Debian and Ubuntu. First I switched to CentOS
> on the servers, but stuck to Ubuntu for my desktop. I still had bad
> memories of my former Red Hat end-days and was extremely reluctant to
> try Fedora.
> 
> In the end, I switched back around Fedora 13. There were the usual
> growing pains of getting used to the way Red Hat / Fedora did things,
> but I got used to it quickly enough. Now, after about two years of solid
> Fedora use, I am a pretty big fan again.
> 
> Fedora is *far* from perfect. It's got plenty of sharp corners and more
> than a few grumpy community members, but when I go back to Ubuntu for
> one reason or another, I remember why I love it. For all it's wrinkles,
> it strikes me as a real open source community.

As long as redhat is deciding where it is going it will never be such
a community to me.  Debian on the other hand clearly is community
developed.

I also know I will never go back to an RPM based distribution after
having used Debian.  RPM is just way too painful to make packages for
(and I find the rpm/yum interface too clumsy too).  It was a vast
improvement over slackware's patchetic concept of a package, but that
was a long time ago.

> In a way, I feel bad for Canonical. They need to pay the bills and I can
> only imagine how big their bills are. However, they've gone about it in
> a way that is, I think, something of a slap in the face of open source.
> To default-bundle ads, to put up a skull (cute as they may have tried to
> make it) when you don't offer them money is offensive. Yes, they have
> invested in a tremendous amount of overhead, but there are countless
> contributors on top of whom's work they build their OS.

Debian manages fine without asking for funding.  They get plenty of
services and hardware donated just by being who they are and doing what
they do.

> Anyway, my purpose was to say; If you are unhappy with Ubuntu, give
> Fedora a try. If you are happy with Ubuntu, and if you want to support
> Canonical, that's totally understandable, too. There is no denying that
> they've been wonderful for open source adoption.

Or go back to Debian and get something truly open in every way and enjoy
your stable system (or use testing or unstable if you want, they almost
always work great too).

-- 
Len Sorensen
--
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