On the contrary. Ubuntu users should accept what Ubuntu developers have accepted from the beginning: Ubuntu is a distro that cannot stand on its own feet. If Debian died today, Ubuntu would die within one year. Or, at least, Ubuntu would become a mere shadow of what it is now. But if Ubuntu died today, that wouldn't have any effect on Debian.
Person'lly, I wouldn't mind if Ubuntu died today.:-P
You've made a nice marketing speech for Ubuntu but you fail to give any actual reasons why Ubuntu would have an advantage over Debian on servers. Let's take a look at the moot arguments you present:
> "Server install. I have to point it out because many people don't know it but installing Ubuntu doesn't necessarily mean installing a full-fledged desktop OS. You can actually select the "server" option during installation and it will only install server-related packages with no X11/X.org packages whatsoever."
Well, Debian has also a "server install". Just install the base system with the netinstall cd and select the type of server you want from tasksel. Verdict: Ubuntu has no advantage here.
> "Fixed release schedule. Ubuntu releases a new version of its install CDs every 6 months while Debian is more irregular and does it less often. It makes it easier for example when you need to install Ubuntu on recent hardware, the kernel is generally more up-to-date and Debian may not detect all of your hardware. Of course it is always possible to find workarounds for Debian (loading an optional kernel module, netbooting a more recent kernel, etc), but it involves more work."
Every six months, you say? I'm sorry, but it doesn't look like Ubuntu is any good in keeping their promises. It is no secret that there is a two months delay for the Ubuntu Dapper release, which actually makes the release cycle from Ubuntu Breezy to Dapper eight months long. And Edgy Eft is planned four months after Dapper. But Edgy is not going to be a stable release in the same sense as Dapper (and Ubuntu devs don't recommend upgrading any production machines to Edgy), so the Edgy+1 release will come ten months after Dapper.
Six months? Eight months? Four months? Ten months? -- Ubuntu's release cycle seems to be totally unpredictable, changing all the time. Verdict: No advantage to Ubuntu here.
> "Packages freshness. Ubuntu tends to have more recent packages than Debian. For example I recently had to install 2 servers, one Ubuntu and one Debian, that had to boot off a software md RAID setup. It worked off-the-shelf with Ubuntu because it uses a more recent initrd package (mkinitramfs, IIRC) while the latest AMD64 Debian release uses an older initrd package (initrd-tools) that was unable to correctly detect and assemble the RAID arrays when booting up, I had to manually fix that to make it work."
Ubuntu Dapper will be supported for five years. Can you guarantee that Ubuntu Dapper can keep its "packages freshness" all the five years in the fast moving world of GNU/Linux software? Can you guarantee that Ubuntu Dapper's kernel will support all the latest hardware for five years? If you cannot guarantee this, then Ubuntu is in this respect no different from any other distro, including Debian. Verdict: No advantage whatsoever to Ubuntu here.
> "Homogeneity. When you already run Ubuntu on your desktop machines, running the same OS on your servers (without the desktop packages of course) simplifies everything: your local package mirroring server only has to mirror packages for 1 OS, maintaining and supporting only 1 OS requires less work than 2 OSes, etc."
You seem to forget that Ubuntu is based on Debian. When you take Xserver and the GNOME desktop tweaks away from Ubuntu, what you've got left is an unstable version of Debian with considerably less officially supported packages available. You don't have to give up on homogeneity if you run Ubuntu on the desktop and Debian on your servers -- you just get a more stable and reliable server. Verdict: Definitely no advantage to Ubuntu here.
> "Developers. It seems Ubuntu developers are extremely active and, simply said, bright people. I have already fixed a couple of bugs in various Ubuntu scripts/packages over the past year or so and Ubuntu developers have always been very quick to respond and apply the patches. I also tend to keep an eye on wha
Debian's next stable release, codenamed Etch, is planned for December 2006. It will have newer software than Ubuntu Dapper and it will have four times as many officially supported packages as Ubuntu. It will also support many architectures that Ubuntu won't. Also Debian's Quality Assurance is much better than Ubuntu's.
Every time Ubuntu starts building a new release, it relies on the Debian technologies (package management, debconf, etc.) and it takes the packages developed in Debian as its starting point. Ubuntu couldn't stand on its own, it stands on Debian's shoulders and this is the only reason why Ubuntu appears to be tall. Sadly it seems that many Ubuntu users fail to understand that most of the ease-of-use features that they appreciate in Ubuntu come straight from Debian. Ubuntu makes a nice choice for the fast-moving desktop software (although I personally prefer Debian testing for my desktop) but there's just no way that Ubuntu could compete with Debian on servers.
There's a big difference between Ubuntu and Debian. Ubuntu is the Debian-based product of a commercial company, Canonical, and their marketing talk for Ubuntu consists of half-truths (=half-lies) and hiding problems from users is part of their their policy. Debian, on the other hand, is a distro made by a non-profit organization developed by volunteers. Debian (unlike Ubuntu) stands on its own feet, it's not based on any other distro and its policy is NOT to hide any problems. Debian supports officially 4-5 times more packages and many more architectures than Ubuntu. Making packages to build on more architectures helps finding and fixing bugs that would otherwise be hard to locate. Being based on Debian, also Ubuntu benefits from the high quality of Debian's packages. Ubuntu has some very skilled developers taking care of the packages in "main" category but there's hardly any criterion for selecting the MOTU's who maintain the packages in "universe" category. In Ubuntu, there's no security updates for the "universe" packages.
There was recently a protest among Kubuntu developers about not getting enough support from Canonical and the main Kubuntu developer (the only one who's getting paid for the job), Jonathan Riddell, quickly wrote a blog entry trying to tell people that there's no quarrel between Kubuntu devs, although there clearly was (and still is, AFAIK). http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1917 Riddel also wrote posts to public forums telling people to "move along, nothing to see here" when these forums informed people about the quarrel. This is just one example of the Ubuntu policy that tells the employed devs to attempt to hide any problems instead of discussing them openly in public. Also Ubuntu's marketing talks consist of half-truths that try to benefit from Debian's good reputation whenever it's appropriate but in general they try to hide the fact that Ubuntu is not really an independent distro that could stand on its own feet. Ubuntu's marketing talk also tries to hide the fact that bug-fixing and security updates are poorly managed in the "universe" packages. I'm sorry, but I refuse to buy Ubuntu's used-cars salesman's marketing discourse. Ubuntu just has too many problems that Debian doesn't have.
It seems that many people don't understand Debian's development model. Some people say that Debian unstable is a good choice for desktop systems. No, it isn't. Debian unstable is the development branch where all new stuff is first introduced. Saying that people should track Debian unstable is like saying that you should always track Ubuntu's development branch instead of using its stable releases. Debian unstable is UNSTABLE (the name should give you a hint about its unstable nature) and it's SUPPOSED to break every now and then because all the main development that goes into Debian happens in unstable. Debian unstable is for developers only -- it's not suitable or recommended for normal users.
Debian testing is the current development branch for the next Debian stable. Debian testing is quite suitable for everyday desktop use -- Debian unstable acts as a kind of bumper where all the serious bugs hit first and where they're also fixed. Once the packages migrate to Debian testing, they have already received some real-world testing that ensures that they're ready for the everyday use. Applications in Debian testing are usually almost, although not quite, the "latest and greatest" versions, because new packages first need some testing and buf-fixing time in Debian unstable. But at times when development goes smoothly, Debian testing can be quite up-to-date. If you use Ubuntu's stable release (that isn't updated for six long months) and if everything goes well in Debian's development (like it has gone lately), then Debian testing should have newer packages most of the time when compared to Ubuntu.
Let's compare some package versions in Ubuntu's latest release and the current Debian testing using the DistroWatch pages for these two
You seem to forget that Ubuntu is based on Debian. This means that Debian does most of the heavy lifting that is required for making each Ubuntu release, so that Ubuntu can concentrate on developing their (GNOME) desktop. Ubuntu supports only a fraction of the amount of packages that Debian does (there's no security updates for Ubuntu's "universe" & "multiverse") and Ubuntu also supports much fewer architectures.
You cannot seriously say that Ubuntu competes with Debian as long as Ubuntu cannot even stand on its own and as long as it has so much less to offer than Debian. I'd recommend Ubuntu to anyone as a good Debian-based GNOME desktop that also has good laptop support, but the fact of the matter is that Ubuntu is just a modified Debian with a carefully planned marketing campaign while Debian is the Real Thing(TM).
From your post it's not obvious what the purpose of Debian Testing is in your opinion, you only seem to suggest that "testing should be avoided." Let me clarify how I see the purpose of both Testing and Unstable.
Unstable is Debian's main development branch and it's INTENDED to break every now and then because it's the branch where most of the development takes place, it's "Still In Development." If Debian Unstable doesn't break often enough, then this can only mean that Debian doesn't develop as fast as it should. Regardless of what the "prevailing wisdom on debian-user list" says, Unstable should be, IMHO, avoided by anyone who isn't a Debian developer.
Debian Testing is also a development branch but packages with known release critical bugs are not accepted to Testing. There's a mandatory quarantine time of ten days before packages can be elevated from Unstable to Testing. This should be enough time that most release critical bugs are discovered and reported by users to package maintainers. For this reason, I think that desktop users should be recommended to use Testing instead of Unstable. (And, for obvious reasons, server users should be recommended to use Debian Stable instead of Testing.)
Debian Testing is the branch from where the next Stable Debian release is made and, ideally, Testing should be always kept close to the "ready for release" quality. So comparing Debian Testing to some other distro's official release is not really that farfetched, after all. But, unfortunately, this ideal of "ready for release" hasn't always been met. Troubles with the Sarge release indicate that Debian testing was at that time a long way from the "ready for release" ideal.
However, things seem to be in a much better shape in the Debian-land nowadays. Now there's a special Testing-security team and release critical bugs are also getting fixed faster, which allows even complex packages like the big desktop environments to migrate from Unstable to Testing without long delays.
In conclusion, using Debian Testing can be painful if the development has stagnated but, on the other hand, it can be joyful when all the little cogwheels of the big Debian development machinery are well-greased and run smoothly.
Upgrading many packages at once can only become a problem in Debian if you have a very slow network connection (or if you mix branches without understanding how apt-pinning works). Also, I don't believe that Debian packages have different dependencies than in other distros -- you need to have specific version of other (dependent) packages for certain packages to work at all. After the Sarge release there was a lot of confusion with the KDE packages in Unstable and Testing but this was because of some major upgrades in the base system (gcc and other stuff that K/Ubuntu managed to upgrade before Debian). And KDE hasn't always been in good shape in Debian but now it seems to be in great shape.
Apparently you've been lucky with Kubuntu -- or maybe you just don't use many packages from Universe. Only the packages in Main are officially supported by the paid K/Ubuntu developers, Universe packages are community supported and Multiverse packages don't get any support at all. This means that QA varies a lot in K/Ubuntu while in Debian (even in Testing & Unstable) all packages are maintained by official developers who have personal responsibility to fix any problems found in their packages. I'm glad to hear that you've found Kubuntu meeting your requirements but I have no doubt that in general Debian packages work better than K/Ubuntu packages.
Slashdot Mirror
On the contrary. Ubuntu users should accept what Ubuntu developers have accepted from the beginning: Ubuntu is a distro that cannot stand on its own feet. If Debian died today, Ubuntu would die within one year. Or, at least, Ubuntu would become a mere shadow of what it is now. But if Ubuntu died today, that wouldn't have any effect on Debian.
Person'lly, I wouldn't mind if Ubuntu died today. :-P
You've made a nice marketing speech for Ubuntu but you fail to give any actual reasons why Ubuntu would have an advantage over Debian on servers. Let's take a look at the moot arguments you present:
> "Server install. I have to point it out because many people don't know it but installing Ubuntu doesn't necessarily mean installing a full-fledged desktop OS. You can actually select the "server" option during installation and it will only install server-related packages with no X11/X.org packages whatsoever."
Well, Debian has also a "server install". Just install the base system with the netinstall cd and select the type of server you want from tasksel. Verdict: Ubuntu has no advantage here.
> "Fixed release schedule. Ubuntu releases a new version of its install CDs every 6 months while Debian is more irregular and does it less often. It makes it easier for example when you need to install Ubuntu on recent hardware, the kernel is generally more up-to-date and Debian may not detect all of your hardware. Of course it is always possible to find workarounds for Debian (loading an optional kernel module, netbooting a more recent kernel, etc), but it involves more work."
Every six months, you say? I'm sorry, but it doesn't look like Ubuntu is any good in keeping their promises. It is no secret that there is a two months delay for the Ubuntu Dapper release, which actually makes the release cycle from Ubuntu Breezy to Dapper eight months long. And Edgy Eft is planned four months after Dapper. But Edgy is not going to be a stable release in the same sense as Dapper (and Ubuntu devs don't recommend upgrading any production machines to Edgy), so the Edgy+1 release will come ten months after Dapper.
Six months? Eight months? Four months? Ten months? -- Ubuntu's release cycle seems to be totally unpredictable, changing all the time. Verdict: No advantage to Ubuntu here.
> "Packages freshness. Ubuntu tends to have more recent packages than Debian. For example I recently had to install 2 servers, one Ubuntu and one Debian, that had to boot off a software md RAID setup. It worked off-the-shelf with Ubuntu because it uses a more recent initrd package (mkinitramfs, IIRC) while the latest AMD64 Debian release uses an older initrd package (initrd-tools) that was unable to correctly detect and assemble the RAID arrays when booting up, I had to manually fix that to make it work."
Ubuntu Dapper will be supported for five years. Can you guarantee that Ubuntu Dapper can keep its "packages freshness" all the five years in the fast moving world of GNU/Linux software? Can you guarantee that Ubuntu Dapper's kernel will support all the latest hardware for five years? If you cannot guarantee this, then Ubuntu is in this respect no different from any other distro, including Debian. Verdict: No advantage whatsoever to Ubuntu here.
> "Homogeneity. When you already run Ubuntu on your desktop machines, running the same OS on your servers (without the desktop packages of course) simplifies everything: your local package mirroring server only has to mirror packages for 1 OS, maintaining and supporting only 1 OS requires less work than 2 OSes, etc."
You seem to forget that Ubuntu is based on Debian. When you take Xserver and the GNOME desktop tweaks away from Ubuntu, what you've got left is an unstable version of Debian with considerably less officially supported packages available. You don't have to give up on homogeneity if you run Ubuntu on the desktop and Debian on your servers -- you just get a more stable and reliable server. Verdict: Definitely no advantage to Ubuntu here.
> "Developers. It seems Ubuntu developers are extremely active and, simply said, bright people. I have already fixed a couple of bugs in various Ubuntu scripts/packages over the past year or so and Ubuntu developers have always been very quick to respond and apply the patches. I also tend to keep an eye on wha
Debian's next stable release, codenamed Etch, is planned for December 2006. It will have newer software than Ubuntu Dapper and it will have four times as many officially supported packages as Ubuntu. It will also support many architectures that Ubuntu won't. Also Debian's Quality Assurance is much better than Ubuntu's.
Every time Ubuntu starts building a new release, it relies on the Debian technologies (package management, debconf, etc.) and it takes the packages developed in Debian as its starting point. Ubuntu couldn't stand on its own, it stands on Debian's shoulders and this is the only reason why Ubuntu appears to be tall. Sadly it seems that many Ubuntu users fail to understand that most of the ease-of-use features that they appreciate in Ubuntu come straight from Debian. Ubuntu makes a nice choice for the fast-moving desktop software (although I personally prefer Debian testing for my desktop) but there's just no way that Ubuntu could compete with Debian on servers.
There's a big difference between Ubuntu and Debian. Ubuntu is the Debian-based product of a commercial company, Canonical, and their marketing talk for Ubuntu consists of half-truths (=half-lies) and hiding problems from users is part of their their policy. Debian, on the other hand, is a distro made by a non-profit organization developed by volunteers. Debian (unlike Ubuntu) stands on its own feet, it's not based on any other distro and its policy is NOT to hide any problems. Debian supports officially 4-5 times more packages and many more architectures than Ubuntu. Making packages to build on more architectures helps finding and fixing bugs that would otherwise be hard to locate. Being based on Debian, also Ubuntu benefits from the high quality of Debian's packages. Ubuntu has some very skilled developers taking care of the packages in "main" category but there's hardly any criterion for selecting the MOTU's who maintain the packages in "universe" category. In Ubuntu, there's no security updates for the "universe" packages.
There was recently a protest among Kubuntu developers about not getting enough support from Canonical and the main Kubuntu developer (the only one who's getting paid for the job), Jonathan Riddell, quickly wrote a blog entry trying to tell people that there's no quarrel between Kubuntu devs, although there clearly was (and still is, AFAIK). http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1917 Riddel also wrote posts to public forums telling people to "move along, nothing to see here" when these forums informed people about the quarrel. This is just one example of the Ubuntu policy that tells the employed devs to attempt to hide any problems instead of discussing them openly in public. Also Ubuntu's marketing talks consist of half-truths that try to benefit from Debian's good reputation whenever it's appropriate but in general they try to hide the fact that Ubuntu is not really an independent distro that could stand on its own feet. Ubuntu's marketing talk also tries to hide the fact that bug-fixing and security updates are poorly managed in the "universe" packages. I'm sorry, but I refuse to buy Ubuntu's used-cars salesman's marketing discourse. Ubuntu just has too many problems that Debian doesn't have.
It seems that many people don't understand Debian's development model. Some people say that Debian unstable is a good choice for desktop systems. No, it isn't. Debian unstable is the development branch where all new stuff is first introduced. Saying that people should track Debian unstable is like saying that you should always track Ubuntu's development branch instead of using its stable releases. Debian unstable is UNSTABLE (the name should give you a hint about its unstable nature) and it's SUPPOSED to break every now and then because all the main development that goes into Debian happens in unstable. Debian unstable is for developers only -- it's not suitable or recommended for normal users.
Debian testing is the current development branch for the next Debian stable. Debian testing is quite suitable for everyday desktop use -- Debian unstable acts as a kind of bumper where all the serious bugs hit first and where they're also fixed. Once the packages migrate to Debian testing, they have already received some real-world testing that ensures that they're ready for the everyday use. Applications in Debian testing are usually almost, although not quite, the "latest and greatest" versions, because new packages first need some testing and buf-fixing time in Debian unstable. But at times when development goes smoothly, Debian testing can be quite up-to-date. If you use Ubuntu's stable release (that isn't updated for six long months) and if everything goes well in Debian's development (like it has gone lately), then Debian testing should have newer packages most of the time when compared to Ubuntu.
Let's compare some package versions in Ubuntu's latest release and the current Debian testing using the DistroWatch pages for these two
You seem to forget that Ubuntu is based on Debian. This means that Debian does most of the heavy lifting that is required for making each Ubuntu release, so that Ubuntu can concentrate on developing their (GNOME) desktop. Ubuntu supports only a fraction of the amount of packages that Debian does (there's no security updates for Ubuntu's "universe" & "multiverse") and Ubuntu also supports much fewer architectures.
You cannot seriously say that Ubuntu competes with Debian as long as Ubuntu cannot even stand on its own and as long as it has so much less to offer than Debian. I'd recommend Ubuntu to anyone as a good Debian-based GNOME desktop that also has good laptop support, but the fact of the matter is that Ubuntu is just a modified Debian with a carefully planned marketing campaign while Debian is the Real Thing(TM).
From your post it's not obvious what the purpose of Debian Testing is in your opinion, you only seem to suggest that "testing should be avoided." Let me clarify how I see the purpose of both Testing and Unstable.
Unstable is Debian's main development branch and it's INTENDED to break every now and then because it's the branch where most of the development takes place, it's "Still In Development." If Debian Unstable doesn't break often enough, then this can only mean that Debian doesn't develop as fast as it should. Regardless of what the "prevailing wisdom on debian-user list" says, Unstable should be, IMHO, avoided by anyone who isn't a Debian developer.
Debian Testing is also a development branch but packages with known release critical bugs are not accepted to Testing. There's a mandatory quarantine time of ten days before packages can be elevated from Unstable to Testing. This should be enough time that most release critical bugs are discovered and reported by users to package maintainers. For this reason, I think that desktop users should be recommended to use Testing instead of Unstable. (And, for obvious reasons, server users should be recommended to use Debian Stable instead of Testing.)
Debian Testing is the branch from where the next Stable Debian release is made and, ideally, Testing should be always kept close to the "ready for release" quality. So comparing Debian Testing to some other distro's official release is not really that farfetched, after all. But, unfortunately, this ideal of "ready for release" hasn't always been met. Troubles with the Sarge release indicate that Debian testing was at that time a long way from the "ready for release" ideal.
However, things seem to be in a much better shape in the Debian-land nowadays. Now there's a special Testing-security team and release critical bugs are also getting fixed faster, which allows even complex packages like the big desktop environments to migrate from Unstable to Testing without long delays.
In conclusion, using Debian Testing can be painful if the development has stagnated but, on the other hand, it can be joyful when all the little cogwheels of the big Debian development machinery are well-greased and run smoothly.
Upgrading many packages at once can only become a problem in Debian if you have a very slow network connection (or if you mix branches without understanding how apt-pinning works). Also, I don't believe that Debian packages have different dependencies than in other distros -- you need to have specific version of other (dependent) packages for certain packages to work at all. After the Sarge release there was a lot of confusion with the KDE packages in Unstable and Testing but this was because of some major upgrades in the base system (gcc and other stuff that K/Ubuntu managed to upgrade before Debian). And KDE hasn't always been in good shape in Debian but now it seems to be in great shape. Apparently you've been lucky with Kubuntu -- or maybe you just don't use many packages from Universe. Only the packages in Main are officially supported by the paid K/Ubuntu developers, Universe packages are community supported and Multiverse packages don't get any support at all. This means that QA varies a lot in K/Ubuntu while in Debian (even in Testing & Unstable) all packages are maintained by official developers who have personal responsibility to fix any problems found in their packages. I'm glad to hear that you've found Kubuntu meeting your requirements but I have no doubt that in general Debian packages work better than K/Ubuntu packages.