[Lilug] Distro Question - Debian

[Brett Viren]

Hi Robert,

Debian and Ubuntu are more alike than they are different.  If you rely
on proprietary drivers/firmware (eg for nVidia GPU) Ubuntu may be a
better match than Debian.  If you want the Unity desktop, pick Ubuntu.
If you want the MATE desktop environment (Gnome2) there is parity
between the two.  If you want a finely-grained, minimal system, starting
with a base Debian would be best.  If you want a more comforting/codling
system Ubuntu has that polish.  If you want to flex geek muscles at Arch
users, pick Debian.  If you want to ride latest updates instead of going
through point release cycles, then Debian testing and/or unstable
"releases" would be a good choice.

Some personal opinions based on using Debian or derivatives since '94.
For the past few years I've used Ubuntu+MATE on a wide variety of
personal and work hardware.  It works fine and stays out of my way so I
can focus on the more important things.  I no longer use Debian-proper
as it has more fiddly bits.  I used to enjoy constant fiddling but it
got tedious after some time.  I do some stuff on RHEL-derived
(Sci. Linux which is essentially Centos) and lament how even new
releases do not provide what I need.  I understand Fedora is better in
this regard but I have no direct experience.  EPEL also helps pick up
RHEL's slack with a larger variety of more up to date packages.  Having
feet in both communities I can say that Ubuntu will have better search
results for problems than things coming from the RHEL world, and even
better than Debian branded answers.  The Debian mailing lists exhibit
far more technically adeptness than those of Sci. Linux.  Others (eg
Arch) have better wikis.

So, it really depends on what it is you want.


Independent of all that, neither a random security vulnerability nor the
death of a community member (even if it be a founder) would influence my
decision to use Debian or Ubuntu, or any other major distro for that
matter.  The major distros are bigger than those things.  Like taxes,
there will always be deaths and vulnerabilities.

-Brett.

Robert Wilkens <robwilkens42 at gmail.com> writes:

> Hi--
>
> A few months ago i was on here, running Ubuntu, and someone pointed
> out some blaring security holes, like a guest account that does not
> stay disabled.
>
> I switched to Fedora, but i do not (yet?) love Fedora, simply by
> running update twice in a row i managed to get on the development
> version (or is fedora just the development version of red hat), and
> for example doing an update knocked out my wifi (necessitating a
> reboot) a few days ago.
>
> A friend (whom i haven't seen in person in about 20 years) told me he
> *is* in love with debian testing. Before i commit to switching again,
> i want to ask here if there are any major known problems with debian
> (stable, testing, or unstable). I probably ran debian unstable 10 or
> more years ago. I believe i heard the founder of Debian (Ian) was dead
> so i have some doubts about how much it's being maintained.
>
> I am much more comfortable with the 'apt' package management system
> than I am with 'dnf' (dandified yum?)
>
> I am not going to transition today or that soon, i want to transfer
> the 2TB SSD in my desktop into my laptop first, so I'll have to clone
> the windows partition over and all that first.
>
> ---
> Sent from Tablet
>
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