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On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 12:41:18 +0100 "Robin Menneer" <robinmenneer@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > If you are happy then stay there... what distribution you choose > > has I think a lot to do with personal preferences. As to why I > > choose debian: > > - see www.debian.org/social_contract > > > I've just read this file (above) and am confused again, clearly debian > is so wonderful that I have been misled in getting ubuntu. Help ! Ubuntu is very close to Debian - the majority of packages ARE Debian packages and often with no changes. The main differences are: 1. Ubuntu has different priorities for releases - 6 monthly, almost no matter what. 1a: because of this, they have to allow some serious bugs to remain in the released code. You have to be happy with the much slower release cycle in Debian - the last stable release was 3.1 (Sarge) that is two years old. The benefit is the increased stability of the code in Debian stable. The Debian Etch (4.0) release date has slipped by three months already, a release is planned for 2nd April 2007 but that may slip again. Release dates don't matter that much in Debian if you are using Debian testing because that is updated every 10 days, outside of freezes for a stable release. Debian Unstable is updated continuously, updates can appear several times a day but breakages are surprisingly rare and are generally fixed in a day or so. Debian unstable is usually only a few days behind every upstream release of nearly all of the 19,000 packages, on 12 architectures. No distribution supports as many packages on as many platforms as Debian - Fedora was something like 50% or less last time I looked (some 8,000?), including Core and Extras, and Fedora doesn't run on the same range of architectures as Debian. That's why we call Debian The Universal OS. (See, I said I was biased.) 2. Ubuntu only support i386, amd64 and powerpc - the easy ones to maintain and package. Debian supports those and arm, mips, mipsel, m68k, sparc, alpha, hppa, ia64 and s390 and there is outline support for other architectures and ports. These extra ports cause extra bugs which delay Debian releases. Within Debian, I'm working on even wider support, bringing Debian from mainframes and PC's to embedded devices like iPAQ's and mobile phone PDA's and every possible machine in between. I don't see any reason why anything with a CPU should not be able to run Debian - even routers and digital TV boxes. You cannot do that with Ubuntu. I want to move towards "If it has a CPU, it can have Debian. Every architecture, every platform, any size." Nothing wrong with that in my book. 3. Ubuntu has a slightly more relaxed approach to proprietary code - although Debian includes non-free, it isn't as easy to install as Ubuntu. 4. Ubuntu is easier for users migrating from other operating systems. Overall, Ubuntu benefits from a smaller architecture set but also requires a much faster release cycle. As a result, it looks better immediately after an install, whereas Debian needs to be installed and then updated. Ubuntu also has a reputation for better 'hand-holding' during the install and 'first-day' experience. With Debian, you are in at the deep end a bit. Thereagain, most Debian users prefer it that way. :-) -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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