Moving from Ubuntu to Debian • Hacker News Board

Re: Moving from Ubuntu to Debian

#51

Post by SkyMarshal » Sun, Nov 03, 2013, 10:06 PM UTC

networked wrote: post #13

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'…

>I wonder who out of today's major players could be the next big thing.

ElementaryOS is doing good things with the Linux desktop and should be a contender.

http://elementaryos.org/

Re: Moving from Ubuntu to Debian

#52

Post by andrewcooke » Sun, Nov 03, 2013, 10:09 PM UTC

networked wrote: post #13

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'…

opensuse is very good. to me (having used both) it feels more transparent - it's easier to change / configure things. you get all the automated help, but it's easier to dig down and fiddle around.

having said that, i am waiting for my openbsd to arrive. i plan to keep opensuse on the laptops, but am going to try openbsd on the server / firewall / everything box.

Re: Moving from Ubuntu to Debian

#53

Post by grigio » Sun, Nov 03, 2013, 10:11 PM UTC

vivab0rg wrote: post #14

Any elementaryOS love around here?

+1 I love ElementaryOS, specially the Gala Window Manager. It is so fast and full-featured compared to Unity or Gnome3 Shell http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shXSV-9PJaU

Re: Moving from Ubuntu to Debian

#54

Post by sethrin » Sun, Nov 03, 2013, 10:12 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #47

mazesc wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After having used Ubuntu, Arch and now Debian testing, I can say that Ubuntu is a great way to get to know Linux. At least it was when I used it with Gnome 2.8. At some point I grew tired of all the unnecessary software bloat, though. I loved Arch, until the moment I had to unexpectedly fix a non-booting system after some update. It just wasn't for me, although the minimalism of it felt great. Now to Debian testing.…

I have to disagree. Ubuntu is a great way to get to know Ubuntu. Debian, while _incredible_ has somewhat the same flaw, but in its case is worth the tradeoff. Slackware or Arch are great ways to get to know Linux.

I must disagree with you in turn, in most particulars. Arch's wiki is an information source par excellence, and I find that the information contained therein is often just what I need to get my Debian system working correctly. The init systems will likely diverge at some point, but as far as I know that decision is not final yet, and I prefer systemd anyway. Are there some particulars you can divulge?

Re: Moving from Ubuntu to Debian

#55

Post by shapeshed » Sun, Nov 03, 2013, 10:15 PM UTC

Choose Arch. Pick any desktop environment and learn how easy it is to switch if you don't like Unity/Gnome/etc

Re: Moving from Ubuntu to Debian

#56

Post by csense » Sun, Nov 03, 2013, 10:22 PM UTC

It would be much more informative to hear from people who use Debian for things that require 3D acceleration -- Minecraft, running Windows games under Wine, Blender.

I have a laptop with nVidia Optimus, so I use Bumblebee. Ah, I see this is in the Debian repos [1] -- maybe I should give Debian a try!

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/Bumblebee

Re: Moving from Ubuntu to Debian

#57

Post by pja » Sun, Nov 03, 2013, 10:27 PM UTC

I have hopes for the Tanglu project delivering on the promise of rolling releases based on Debian Testing for desktop use. But they aren't quite there yet unfortunately.

http://www.tanglu.org/

Re: Moving from Ubuntu to Debian

#58

Post by chilldream » Sun, Nov 03, 2013, 10:48 PM UTC

josteink wrote: post #7

general_failure wrote: post #5

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

But if the idea is to get away from Canonical's decisions, moving to a distro based directly on Ubuntu seems a bit backwards. Check the repos. Mint is Ubuntu + some extras.

Debian Edition aside, the things people complain about are generally things that Mint removes; in fact, looking at the three bullet points from the original article:

* Unity - Completely ignored in Mint, in favor of MATE (Gnome 2 fork) and Cinnamon (Gnome 3 fork, I believe?) * Amazon Search - removed * Mark Shuttleworth - Only upstream where no one has to care about him

Re: Moving from Ubuntu to Debian

#59

Post by busterarm » Sun, Nov 03, 2013, 11:38 PM UTC

sethrin wrote: post #54

busterarm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree. Ubuntu is a great way to get to know Ubuntu. Debian, while _incredible_ has somewhat the same flaw, but in its case is worth the tradeoff. Slackware or Arch are great ways to get to know Linux.

I must disagree with you in turn, in most particulars. Arch's wiki is an information source par excellence , and I find that the information contained therein is often just what I need to get my Debian system working correctly. The init systems will likely diverge at some point, but as far as I know that decision is not final yet, and I prefer systemd anyway. Are there some particulars you can divulge?

Ubuntu, like most mainstream distributions, has design choices and UI that abstracts away as much as possible the act of administering a Linux system. A lot of things you will do on Ubuntu are specific to Ubuntu systems, and even more so with distros like RHEL and Gentoo. Then you have oddities like GoboLinux.

It's one of the oldest sayings in the community that "if you know Slackware, you know Linux". This is somewhat less true for Arch but pretty close and still has the same spirit.

I've run Slackware, Debian, you name it and built my own LFS systems and run those as well. Slackware is as "raw Linux" as it gets, but due to frustrations with recent versions, I switched to Arch and haven't looked back for my Linux systems. It makes administration much simpler without having to do much that's specific to the distro and different from what you should expect in Linux.

That isn't something even remotely true about Ubuntu -- and apparently getting less so as time goes on.

tl;dr: what I'm trying to say here is that there are users and there are administrators. If you can't administrate your Linux system, you don't know Linux. Ubuntu tries to be a Linux system for users without needing to be a sysadmin. This is an idea that's "okay" I guess but in my opinion still not ready for primetime. Using a Ubuntu system isn't "knowing Linux".

Re: Moving from Ubuntu to Debian

#60

Post by pantalaimon » Sun, Nov 03, 2013, 11:42 PM UTC

SkyMarshal wrote: post #51

networked wrote: post #13

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'…

>I wonder who out of today's major players could be the next big thing. ElementaryOS is doing good things with the Linux desktop and should be a contender. http://elementaryos.org/

Without a company or a large community behind it, I doubt it will gain much traction. Also except for the Desktop Environment, it's Ubuntu again.