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Trouble on the Debian Front?
Linux.com is reporting that Matthew Garrett, one of the more active Debian developers, has called some ongoing problems with the Debian project into focus with his resignation. While he didn't hold any actual office, many prominent Debian developers described Garrett as "high profile". From the article: "In his own blog, Garrett relates his gradual discovery that Debian's free-for-all discussions were making him intensely irritable and unhappy with other members of the community. He contrasts Debian's organization with Ubuntu's more formal structure. In particular, he mentions Ubuntu's code of conduct, which is enforced on the distribution's mailing lists, suggesting that it 'helps a great deal in ensuring that discussions mostly remain technical.' He also approves of Ubuntu's more formal structure as 'a pretty explicit acknowledgment that not all developers are equal and some are possibly more worth listening to than others.' Then, in reference to Mark Shuttleworth, the founder and funder of Ubuntu, Garrett says, 'At the end of the day, having one person who can make arbitrary decisions and whose word is effectively law probably helps in many cases.'"
A lot of the comments here seem to be along the lines of "use Ubuntu for as a Windows replacement, use Debian for servers". Not necessarily. Ubuntu installs Gnome by default, which is not as much of a Windows replacement as KDE (as used in Kubuntu). For working servers, though, I've done server-only installs of Ubuntu, which leaves off X-Windows entirely, giving me a lightweight install I can customize from the command line. Then, as a test, I've added the Xubuntu components to one server, which adds Xfce4 and some X apps like the Synaptic package manager. I don't need Gnome or KDE on a server, even Xfce is a luxury I could easily do without, and Ubuntu lets me decide which way I want to go.
My point is that the monolithic Ubuntu Gnome install that gets the most publicity is not the be-all and end-all of the Ubuntu project. In particular, this "Windows replacement" talk is misplaced, if you stick with the Gnome defaults, instead of KDE.
(this is not a
Well, I'm a debian user since 1998, and I also conributed half a dozen patches or so in that time.
But I have to say, the only thing that ever caused me serious problems in using Debian (prevented me from doing what I wanted) was the Kernel. And that isn't Debian specific. Problems in the Kernel are prevalent in all distributions.
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.