Why I’m Leaving Ubuntu for Debian
micahflee.com
micahflee.com
His objections appear to be:
He doesn't like Ubuntu switching away from GNOME (presumably 2) by default. Except that Debian have moved to GNOME 3 as well, which is why GNOME 2 is no longer available in Ubuntu. However, GNOME 3 is available in Ubuntu, so all he's really complaining about is the default.
He doesn't like Ubuntu One, except that in Ubuntu it's merely something that's available. Your experience is exactly the same as Debian's if you don't use it.
He doesn't like Ubuntu Software Centre. Except that you don't have to use it. apt-get and Synaptic are available and work just fine in Ubuntu. Software available from the Software Centre includes software not part of Ubuntu itself. Thus it doesn't violate any rules about Ubuntu itself. Debian is the same - third parties publish .deb files, and these don't have to comply with any Debian guidelines either. Yet Debian ships dpkg, which allows one to install them.
He complains that he can't find the "Ubuntu Manifesto". I'm not sure of the exact document he's referring to, but the principles he's referring to and quotes can be found in one click from http://www.ubuntu.com: http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy [edit: apologies, two clicks; "About Ubuntu" and then "Philosophy". Still, not exactly hidden]
Then he complains about Unity again, except that he doesn't need to use it. GNOME 3 is available in Ubuntu, along with Xfce and LXDE, and you can get these by default if you use Xubuntu or Lubuntu install images.
Then he complains about Ubuntu not focusing on privacy. Ubuntu introduced a single central place to manage your privacy settings in 12.04 (http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/02/privacy-controls-minor-ui...). The privacy settings he's complaining about can be controlled from here. Again, all his complaint boils down to is what the default is.
So, given that everything in Debian is available in Ubuntu, his article "Why I'm Leaving Ubuntu for Debian" can be summarised to one word: "principle". And perhaps you might want to add "defaults", except that Xubuntu and Lubuntu are available and provide defaults that eliminate all of his complaints.
He's entitled to this view, of course, but the rest is FUD.
Ubuntu seem to hide the privacy settings a little bit (even that link you sent, the privacy section isn't properly explained, just a vague reference to "files activity"). When I read your post about the central place to manage privacy settings I thought "wow really?" went there and changed them.
Now on the other hand, you might argue this is all my fault for not taking the time to find out about my privacy settings...
It is treated privately - it gets anonymized, so there's no privacy violation going on in the first place. There's a notice on the Dash that gives you the details, which is visible any time the search box is visible. And the box is a global search box. Do you expect privacy when you search in a Google search box also?
> Now on the other hand, you might argue this is all my fault for not taking the time to find out about my privacy settings...
No. My argument is that your privacy isn't violated with default settings in the first place. For the truly paranoid, you can still turn it off. But if you have that level of paranoia, you'd better audit all the source code on your system yourself. Do you know, for example, the details of how Chrome and Firefox anonymize URLs you visit for blacklist warning purposes?
Fat chance. Say I wanted to edit my resume, so I pop open Dash and search for "John Smith Resume". As long as they send up "John Smith Resume", they know a) my name, and b) that I'm looking for a new job.
> Do you expect privacy when you search in a Google search box also?
Apples and oranges. I have different expectations when searching local data than when searching public data. If something's indexed by Google, it's not secret obviously. If something's on my hard drive, it might be secret.
Your problem is that you believe the Dash to be a search for local data, when it is not. It is a single search box which is supposed to figure out what resource you want (be it local or remote).
Observe ordinary users (the users that Ubuntu is aimed at, btw). Many will go to Google and type a URL in their search box. They do not distinguish. If a search fails, they don't care that they didn't type the search into the wrong type of box. As far as they're concerned, it didn't work. Demanding that they differentiate first is a worse UX.
If you want to do a local search, then don't type the search into a global search box.
Less is more. If everything he needs is available in Debian and he doesn't need the extra stuff provided by Ubuntu, then the default choice should be to use Debian.
Out of frustration I installed Ubuntu and in Ubuntu my Wifi just worked out of the box. And that's when I switched.
Of course, Ubuntu does make mistakes. Nouveau for instance is better for my old laptop's Geforce and yet Ubuntu still asks me to install the proprietary Nvidia drivers, drivers which have brought me nothing but frustration. But regardless, Ubuntu does have the best hardware support.
I of course, am sympathetic to his view point. Without having ever heard of this guy, I had the exact same experience while returning to Ubuntu after some time.
I really, really did not like how Ubuntu was initially packaged after a fresh install. Of course, I can make it into anything I want -- no use complaining! So I spent a few hours on this process, molding it into the operating system I wanted it to be. But then I started to think, why wasn't I doing this on Debian, or Arch, or FreeBSD? Since the moment I went to download Ubuntu, the web page was in my face to buy shit. I don't mind paying for software and I believe certain things have intrinsic value. But this approach to selling an operating system started needling a pit of dread into my stomach. If I'm already taking the time to undue everything I hate about the default Ubuntu install, and if I am already building up a healthy loathing at the way the operating system wants to sell my attention and information at every opportunity, how does it offer any value at all? Then the question occurred to me: What awful thing that I am going to have to undue is going to come out of the next release of Ubuntu?
For me Ubuntu has solidly become the wrong choice. I don't mind spending the time to customize my computing environment. But if I need to do that I'm going to choose an OS that aligns better with my principles.
I must admit i haven't touched Debian as a Desktop Operating System for many years but i appreciate the Desktop Experience that is available with Ubuntu out of the box very very much. All _my_ stuff just works (hello binary blob drivers at Debian?), most stuff nowadays has those private package archives, yet i still don't need to run debian unstable to get relatively recent software. I know i have 6 months until a new version comes along, as opposed to many years of waiting. I admit i frequently reinstall Ubuntu (like every 1 or 2 releases), but that's no hazzle while keeping /home. I still get to test btrfs (changed back to ext4 one release afterwards), i still can screw around with the system a little bit.. nahh.. i don't see me going back to Debian on the Desktop.. Ubuntu may be only a redesign of if, but they make it working nicely on my laptop, the community is huge..
I must admit i wouldn't want to sit down an afternoon with Debian to figure out why my graphics is screwed or my Wifi isn't working, etc. Not anymore, it was fine 10 years ago, ,not 2013..
That said, i'd choose Debian as a server OS any time!
>private package archives
Personal Package Archives [1] actually, but another good point. Between the Debian and Ubuntu repos, Ubuntu PPAs, and the awesome Debian tool Update Alternatives [2], I can install any piece of software, packaged or not, and even multiple versions simultaneously and change the active version with a single command line command [3]. I don't know if the Red Hat or Open Suse ecosystem has something like this, but I'd have a hard time switching to something else without an equivalent.
[1]: https://help.launchpad.net/Packaging/PPA
[2]: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/ch-customizing....
[3]: https://github.com/byrongibson/scripts/tree/master/install/h...
But hey, at least the community is a cesspool of idiots cargo-culting their way to oblivion!
Edit: Ooh, almost forgot: http://i.imgur.com/2sCYFvh.png Ubuntu has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. Have you tried turning it off and on again?
After having used Xubuntu for a while I'm getting really tempted to just ln -s /bin/grep /bin/grerp
:)
Would you prefer seeing a terminal login prompt after X crashed?
But I haven't used ubuntu in a while, so perhaps this is just a case of I'm not in the right user group for the distro.
You can disable this feature by opening /etc/default/apport and editing enabled=1 to enabled=0. Then stop the service with "sudo service apport stop" or reboot.
You can then selectively enable it again when you notice a reproducible bug or use ubuntu-bug to report bugs against packages.
I actually like this feature. I'm often following a tutorial, or using a command on a newer install, and suddenly a command's not found -- it's really nice to be able to see how to get past the obstacle immediately without Googling, guessing, or trying to figure out how to make the "apt-cache search" command tell you what you want to know.
Also, for me the loading time isn't this long and is greatly reduced after the first such search. I'm guessing your system is under RAM pressure and your disk is fragmented.
If you mistype commands often, there's an entertaining package which contains an "sl" command.
sudo apt-get install sl
DESCRIPTION
SL stands for Steam Locomotive.
BUGS
It rarely shows contents of current directory.Except two things: higher standards around packaging/stability and the DFSG. These are the things I value most in Debian, especially the way they stick to their guns and refuse to release until it's ready.
http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy
> every computer user: Should have the freedom to download, run,
> copy, distribute, study, share, change and improve their software for
> any purpose, without paying licensing fees.The main problem was that the interface was sluggish. Switching to Unity 2D made it better, but on the other hand Unity 2D was missing functionality and still sluggish compared to Xfce.
But I just got a new laptop. It's a Thinkpad with an Intel HD 4000 graphics card and everything just worked out of the box - graphics, wifi, web cam, sound, everything.
And funny thing, now I like Unity and in fact the problem with my old laptop was the graphics card I was using - some kind of Geforce and thinking about it, all the problems I ever had can be traced back to it and the proprietary drivers I kept installing. My old laptop is still around and so I gave the Nouveau drivers a chance. I was surprised at how well Nouveau worked with Unity.
So a word to the wise if you want to try out Unity or Gnome Shell ... (1) prefer Intel HD graphics over Geforce and if that's not an option (2) give Nouveau a try!
Ubuntu is aimed at beginners and people that don't want to fiddle around (too much). Earlier distros were very very good and very useable compared to others, so they attracted a lot of users. When Vista came out there was an influx of Linux newbies.
At some point Canonical decided they needed to make money from Ubuntu, so deals like the Amazon search come in. Obviously they're still aiming for the goal they were originally looking for (an easy to use distro for people to switch to) but their actions are alienating some of the more technical users who wanted a quieter life compared to other distros.
Unless something changes to retain the more tech savvy users (and those users that have grown to be more tech savvy because of Ubuntu's low barrier to entry) I wouldn't be surprised if we see a brain drain in the Ubuntu community as the more technical flee to Arch, Debian and Mint.
1. Ubuntu comes with a more modern kernel than any Debian release.
2. If you don't care about system internals, then you're probably more productive with ubuntu than with, say, arch.
3. I've never used mint, but based on its description, it seems to be even friendlier to beginners, so I don't really understand your point.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see a brain drain in the
Ubuntu community as the more technical flee to Arch,
Debian and Mint.
It's awesome. It works everywhere and it works consistently.
It's funny to think the reason that I initially made the switch from Ubuntu was as trivial as the audio drivers on my vaio breaking on every dist-upgrade so that I had to build alsa from source twice a year.
I've had a look at 'buntu again recently as I've been given a Xubuntu machine at work, and I haven't yet worked out debian for my chromebook. Xubuntu is pretty...
I'm running Ubuntu in AWS. I'm running Ubuntu in my main PC. I'm running Ubuntu in my laptop. I'm running Ubuntu at job in a Virtual Machine.
I love Unity. All the other distros look like the SuSE or the Mandrake I used a decade ago. Meanwhile OSX and Win7 happened.
Unity looks new and nice. It has better user friendliness than the other distros. Yes, I want user friendliness. I installed Slackware in something close to a hundred diskettes. I compiled thousand upon thousand packages in Gentoo. I now realize how pointless those installs were. Ubuntu just works and Unity makes it great.
The only thing I would install instead of Unity is Macbuntu 10.04, but now it is too outdated and the external package repositories stay unsigned.
If you want to read it quicker, add this to your /etc/hosts:
190.93.254.39 micahflee.com
The only real difference then between the resulting environment vs. Debian is that Ubuntu have somehow coupled Unity with Gnome, such that you still get booted into a stripped down version of the Unity shell. But if you log out and back into Gnome, there's practically no difference between Ubuntu LTS/Debian Testing.
My experience with ubuntu was that when something went wrong, there was no easy way to deduce exactly what had happened, or what to do to fix it. The forums were full of similar symptoms with different causes.
I've also become much more knowledgeable about the way linux, and OSes in general, work thanks to the closer relationship arch makes you foster with your machine.