Comment by pksadiq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pksadiq | Hacker News Reader

I would recommend Debian GNU/Linux over Ubuntu for the following reasons:

* Stability: I consider Debian testing/unstable more stable than Ubuntu stable (Try updating an ubuntu with lots of package installed).

* Privacy: Debian is more concerned about User's privacy then Ubuntu. If your iceweasel (now firefox) automatically connects to internet to load some data against your wish, you can consider this as a bug in Debian (and several other examples).

* Community support: You get community support from both Ubuntu and Debian communities.

* Truely free software 0: No non-free software by default. No binary blobs. But you may choose to have, if you wish to.

* Truely free software 1: In Debian, if you solely install packages from 'main' repo, you can safely use it, even in commercial setup. But in ubuntu, there can be packages that may commercially have several restrictions (and those repos are enabled by default).

Everything is from upstream: GNOME, wayland, flatpak ...

(Try updating an ubuntu with lots of package installed)

Always do and don't remember any issues.

Mostly, Ubuntu is Debian with some niceties thrown in like AskUbuntu, Unity, PPAs, or a release schedule.

PPAs are really a distinct advantage over Debian. Wish this would get backported.

> Always do and don't remember any issues.

Have you ever tried updating an old Ubuntu (say, 14.04 LTS) with lots of -dev packages installed?

I have had this issue several times, which made me force to switch one of my client's system to Debian.

I just updated Ubuntu last night..and it's no longer working. I would switch to Openbsd but I need VMs. I guess it's time to go back to the good old Debian

If I were able to switch to a new OS now, I'd give a try to NixOS and GuixSD (especially to the latter as it fits my love of lisp and emacs). They bring a new paradigm to the table in package management. Unfortunately a bit busy nowadays...

OpenBSD includes a hypervisor nowadays.

http://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-6.0/man4/amd64/vmm.4

Thanks for this advice. I'm a bit of an ubuntu fanboi, but I've been getting a bit irritated by some of the stability issues and rough edges. I'll give Debian a try as soon as I have time.

What's the switching to Debian learning curve like, regarding command line tools etc?

Imho the differences are rather subtle. Ubuntu comes more consumer ready and pre-configured whereas Debian is "raw" and needs more initial setup effort.

Well, depends. Debian has so called "tasks". If you install one of the desktop tasks (e.g. task-gnome-desktop), it's as complete as any other pre-configured distribution.

Still the Desktop task is imho by no means comparable to what you get when you install Ubuntu Desktop. Ubuntu is more "turn key" ready what some again would consider as bloated. It's a lot about personal preference...

> Debian is "raw" and needs more initial setup effort.

For some while I have been trying to write some hacky scripts[0] that would help users to configure their Debian systems really easily (consider the script as pre-alpha).

[0] https://gitlab.com/sadiq/systemconf

I'm using mint in my notebook as the main SO just because it have NVIDIA suporte from the box. No neet to edit x11.org. Every time I open x11.org to edit, my life quaklity is decreased.

And well mint works well enouth for my needs.

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