[CVALE] Wondering about Ubuntu...

[Matt R Hall]

On 6/9/06, Landon Blake <lblake at ksninc.com> wrote:
> I'm getting to like my Debian distro, and I am happy this group recommended
> it to me so many month's ago. However, I was looking at Ubuntu today, and it
> looked appealing. It seems it might be a little more up-to-date with the
> software packages, as I saw it running Open Office 2.0.
This complaint is very common but Debian realizes it and here are a
few select choices:
1) backports archive- a collection of the latest stuff compiled for
the most recent stable debian release; available at
http://www.backports.org/ .
2) unstable release- the latest debian package archive, which has not
been released yet as a stable tree. despite its name, it's generally
pretty safe to use but you would likely want to subscribe to
debian-user, debian-devel-announce and some of the other popular lists
on http://lists.debian.org/ . Also you will find it helpful to visit
the #debian channel on irc.us.freenode.net and irc.oftc.net. Currently
there is a bit of flux as the official debian channel moves from the
former to the latter. Also, keep around a copy of Knoppix and back up
your data just in case, but it's not likely you will need to worry
about it ever being an issue. The upside of unstable is that new Linux
software probably shows up in here before any other place besides
Gentoo Portage, and the packages are better quality than Gentoo's
without the need to compile. Also, features arrive very quickly and
bugs are fixed here faster than they are in any other version of
Debian, since this is what the actual developers use to compile and
run the Debian packages.

3) /usr/local/ tree- if you need something obscure or extremely new
(such as the latest CVS or SVN version which is not specifically
packaged for any Linux except perhaps Gentoo) then you can download
this yourself and install into /usr/local. Debian guarantees that, if
there is a copy of something in /usr/local and you have not edited the
system defaults, that it will run before any version in the rest of
the filesystem. This comes in handy primarily for multimedia
applications and drivers for obscure new devices, because both can be
very version sensitive and subject to rapid, capricious, arbitrary
feature and stability changes.

> I also found out today that Ubuntu is offering commercial support.
Please consider http://www.debian.org/consultants/ if you are curious
what Debian offers in this arena. The big Ubuntu <--> Debian
difference here is that Ubuntu is a company while Debian is not really
a company (except perhaps as a necessary technicality). You can think
of Ubuntu almost as if it were yet another entry on the Debian
consultants list, whose support model includes releasing particular
customized binaries.

> I was thinking about what type of Linux Desktop I might use in a small
> business. I wanted something based on Debian, since that is the Linux distro
> that I have been learning. However, I wasn't to impressed with Linspire or
> Xandros. I think Ubuntu might be what I'm looking for.
Maybe I'm reading a bit much into this part but I have to say I'm not
sure why you decided Debian's a bad choice for small business. I'd be
curious to see your reasoning so I can understand your point better.
My experience with enterprise support was that it was easier to
circumvent it or go around it than go through it. The person most
likely to get it working the way I wanted it to work was me, not a
third party (even if it was a third party in my company).

In my opinion, UNIX seems to be a lot more binary in its learning
curve than Windows: either your firm knows it well enough (either by
collective knowledge or by the knowledge of some admins / power users)
to use it for business or they don't. I'm not sure that a commercial
UNIX support contract offers much more usability than not having one,
except for the fact you have somebody to blame or swear at when it
quits working.

I think the reason for this is that in the UNIX world users can and do
write their own programs more often than in Windows, and they have
access to the source code (even if you don't code this is still
helpful. I used source long before I could write good C and C++). If
something goes wrong on a UNIX system you have every tool in the world
that you might need to troubleshoot it or develop a workaround.

On Windows, even if you are an expert, it's nearly impossible to
troubleshoot without a vendor because you don't have access to any of
the code or tools you get on a UNIX box, so you lack the context to
understand what's causing certain problems you might be experiencing.

My conclusion from this line of thought I've brought up would be that
the only useful support for UNIX is training to become more proficient
at UNIX, which will lead to computation independence and the ability
to solve your own problems yourself. Being good at UNIX these days I
often find myself writing small simple but powerful programs that do a
lot of tedious tasks for me. That's the one skill that, knowing what I
now know, would have been worth spending support contract money on if
I were a company manager trying to work with UNIX.

Noting that you work at an architectural / engineering firm, you might
think of it like the difference between AutoCAD and Revit. I think of
Windows as being like AutoCAD: relatively easy to use but very
repetitive and always wasting your time on pointless dialog box
clicking; whereas UNIX is like Revit: more complicated to learn but
once you figure out the programming interface to the backend of it,
you can do anything and everything you want 100% automatically. The
greatest thing about programs is, once one is done and debugged, it
won't make mistakes or get bored or worn out like a human will.

> Is anyone currently running Ubuntu?
I've tried it.

> What do you think of it?
It's definitely pretty good but I like Debian unstable better.

> How does it compare to Debian?
Not as many packages, updates are faster, some features are missing
that they think everyday users don't need (which might or might not be
a good assumption).

> Is it based of a Debian version? If so, which one?
Periodic forks from Debian unstable.

> Does Ubuntu use a separate package repository?
Completely seperate repo containing some custom work but mostly
recompiled Debian unstable packages (this is their secret to keeping
it current: releasing Debian unstable more often than Debian releases
Debian unstable).

> Thanks for the info.
Sure!

> Landon
Matt