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Re: [LUG] Pondering upon Debian

 

On Tuesday 18 March 2008 12:43:00 Simon Waters wrote:
> Dave Berkeley wrote:
> > I'm all Ubuntu these days (3 laptops and 2 desktops). It is easy to
> > install and set up, and life is too short to be worrying about things
> > that have changed since the last install. The only problem I've had was
> > during an update that broke my WiFi link. I had to plug into a wired
> > network to fix it.
>
> I think this is a key point.
>
> Ubuntu may release more often, but they also create a lot more breakage.
> I'm guessing most folks don't care about the odd bit of breakage,
> especially when a million other folk have the same problem the fix is
> usually quite quick. Heck I run Debian unstable and the breakage (such
> as it is) isn't really much of an issue (MS Windows is worse than
> unstable).

For the record the problem was with non-open drivers. The WiFi support has 
worked better in Ubuntu than other distributions I've tried - but that is 
perhaps because things have improved a lot in the last couple of years, and 
I've not looked at much else recently - so any improvements seems to be down 
to Ubuntu. WiFi used to be a nightmare.

It makes a change to think that the grass isn't much greener somewhere else, 
but that doesn't mean that it isn't. The important thing is to find something 
you are happy with. That will probably change over time. Ubuntu is easy, it 
is friendly, and it has a good name. What more could you ask for?

It is only when you are doing something specialist that you need to worry 
about the fine detail. Hence people's comments on servers, and mine on 
embedded systems.

I suspect most people won't give a damn about the distribution. They just want 
a machine that works reliably, and lets them do what they want to do. It 
would just confuse most people. The Gnome / KDE thing is much more 
significant. You need to be able to give someone a disk, and say "wipe your 
Windows machine and put this on instead". I just did that to a new laptop, 
and it always cheers me up. Never even booted Windows.

The only Micro$oft product I use at the moment is a mouse. They make good 
mice.

:)

D

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