On Mon, Mar 19, 2007 at 08:37:27PM -0300, Jorge Peixoto de Morais Neto wrote: > >And for the people who actually want to use Linux, they will > >eventually move from Ubuntu to Debian. > > I don't want to start a flamewar, but I don't why Debian is superior to > Ubuntu for a home user. >
I've found Debian is more ways than one to be more suitable for home use. Ubuntu offers a new release every six months, which while some people like upgrading I really don't. Ubuntu's dist-upgrade is broken for the most part, and doesn't work as well as Debian's, meaning that every six months you're almost always forced to make a choice; Risk a dist-upgrade break, or reinstall Ubuntu's new release. I gave up on that after an unsuccessful Dapper->Edgy upgrade, because I realise if I really want to keep my laptop working for college (I'll be using this next year to take notes during class), I'll need something stable that won't break every six months (Of course I can just not dist-upgrade, but then I wouldn't get ANY package upgrades). Debian also offers three flavors, and two ways to use them; Since we all use Debian I'll skip the explanation, but basically stable is good for server use, testing is good for stable home use and unstable is good for bleeding edge home use. And for the two ways to use them, you can either be running "Etch" or "Testing". And yes, those are two different things; Running "Testing" means you'll always stay updated without having to worry about upgrading to a new version, or reinstalling Debian, for example. And I'm a GNU Purist, besides my wireless drivers (Which are in contrib) I have no non-free packages installed on my system. Ubuntu doesn't offer any differentiations between non-free packages and free packages in their repositories, which upset me when I run my weekly "vrms" to find that the program "unrar" was non-free. Of course now I use the (Far inferior) unrar-free program, but I hated how Ubuntu had no seperation between the repositories. The Debian social contract is the main thing that won me, and I have a friend in my Math class who also uses Debian because he loves Debian and the way it does everything (He has been distro hopping, but always ends up back on Debian. Even after trying Ubuntu he landed back into Debian's arms). Just my two cents, I still consider Ubuntu a good distro for people who don't want to do any extensive work on their computers to use, but I think that if you have a bit of free time for troubleshooting and customizing and occasionally working around problems, Debian is really the greatest distribution available. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]