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Moving from Ubuntu to Debian

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Re: Moving from Ubuntu to Debian

#12

Post by computer »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #8
keypusher wrote: post #3

There are actually many good Linux distributions not named Ubuntu.

Would anyone recommend some? Also, would anyone talk about FreeBSD vs Linux? What are some reasons to choose each?

Arch is one. Continuous updating (never having to reinstall, nor running an LTS with 4 year old software), pretty much any software you might ever need in the official repositories or in the AUR (Arch User Repository), lots of freedom to tinker.

Updating it needs some care, since once every few months a breaking change is announced requiring some manual intervention. But that's not a problem if you subscribe to the mailing list.

Re: Moving from Ubuntu to Debian

#13

Post by networked »

So, is the Linux distribution market now ripe for disruption?

I wonder who out of today's major players could be the next big thing. OpenSUSE seems the closest to Ubuntu in terms of user friendliness (Linus' comments notwithstanding) due to tools like YaST [1] and a PPA-like mechanism called the openSUSE Build Server for extra prebuilt software [2]. People certainly have speculated about it online for a while but we're yet to see an exodus of Ubuntu users to openSUSE.

On a related note, a major thing Ubuntu and its derivatives have going for them is the great font rendering out of the box. I wonder why other distributions haven't yet adopted it, or the Infinality patches [3], as defaults.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaST

[2] That said, although I've been following their releases lately I haven't used a SUSE distribution as a daily driver since SUSE 9.3, so I don't know how the quality compares; any openSUSE users here that can chime in with a comment?

[3] See http://www.infinality.net/blog/.

Re: Moving from Ubuntu to Debian

#15

Post by shavenwarthog2 »

general_failure wrote: post #5

I recommend mint. I think its a good idea to try out alternatives.

+1 Mint. I used Ubuntu, not Debian, because things "just worked." Ubuntu over time seemed to get slower and more intrusive, so I tried out Mint. It is fast, not over complex, and things like media and devices Just Work. I'm a fan of the Cinnamon interface, although in practice I use a minimal tiling window manager like i3 or wmii.

I'm a big fan of the Debian way of doing things. Next time I have an excuse I'll try LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition.)

http://www.linuxmint.com/

Re: Moving from Ubuntu to Debian

#16

Post by louwrentius »

For me there is a more mundane reason why I think about switching my servers over from Ubuntu to Debian.

"Graphics"

That's right. It seems that Ubutu even on servers starts some high-res console or does other stuff that causes a black screen during boot. It requires fiddling with alt-fx keys to get a console. I never had such issues with Debian. I switched away from Debian because so many software was out-dated and an installation has max 3 years of support (Love the Ubuntu LTS versions), which I care about because I don't have a fully-automated server/service deployment environment using Ansible or something and manual reinstalling a server is a chore, especially if it's not really necessary.

Re: Moving from Ubuntu to Debian

#18

Post by onosendai »

I also moved away from Unity after about a year or so of using it (some good ideas, but too unstable for my taste), and instead of going Debian, which was my initial impulse, I decided to give Ubuntu Gnome a try. This is a Ubuntu variant that isn't talked about much, and it's still early days for them, but it shows some promise.

You basically get the same Ubuntu base you're used to with all the repositories and PPAs intact, which if we're being honest are probably second to none in the whole Linux landscape, with a pretty vanilla GNOME 3 stack.

The devs just put out a call for more contributors today (http://ubuntugnome.org/urgent-need-for-more-contributors), and I'd love to see this distro take off. I'm also interested in seeing how they'll handle the whole Mir situation.

Re: Moving from Ubuntu to Debian

#20

Post by deckiedan »

I also had an experience of installing debian recently, and finding it 'just work' extremely well.

Especially if you have a set up (window-manager, etc) that you like and aren't searching for a new cool updated-by-other-people UI (like windows, OSX, KDE, Gnome and Unity), then debian is really quite easy to set up.

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