"Debian and Ubuntu. Ubuntu and Debian. How are they different? How are they the same? Well, most of the differences lie in the target userbase of the OSes. Debian is attempting the unattemptable by making a distro that's right for almost every use imaginable. Servers use it, workstations use it, monkeys I'm sure could use it too. That comes at a price." More here.
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Member since:2005-07-12
You know, I think the question that's yet to be awsered is if Canonical will be ditching the Debian Social Contract in the long run and turn Ubuntu into a commecial distro mutch like Red Hat. I haven't actualy read the thing but I shure as hell dont like the idea of selling out Freedom for a buck, so to speek.
It never crossed my mind before reading this guy's blog entry (that i realy didn't agree with anyway but that would be another post alltogether) of the implications of a user migrantion from Debian to Ubuntu, beacause Debian is a comunitary distro, without volunteer work it stagnates and "dies". Ubuntu on the other hand will be around for as long as there's money to pay developers. so tha's a none issue for them.
I fear that the day will come when Debian is "dead" from the lack of userbase and a caring comunity, and if that day day actualy comes Canonical will have all the freedom in the world to turn Ubuntu into "Something Better" by forcing wierd-unholy-drm-eula like stuff down the Joe "Uncaring" User throat.
Shure Ubuntu has its credits to, the comunity is vibrant and well organized around a centralized oficial forum and compensive wiki.
Debain's single biggest problem is IMHO organic. I's outrageous how a project so relevant such as debian, that on top of all is a comunitary project and as sutch depends on a top notch web interface and information extchange among the various elementens of the said project, the comuniy, has been working for so long with sutch an indadequate and outdated back end. Would it be so hard to restructure the whole damn website and implement a forum?
To sum up, IMHO:
- Ubuntu kicks ass, but Freedom is a price to high to pay.
- Debian could 0wn, instead being 0wned by Ubuntu.
- The secret of Ubuntus sucess is markting, smart package selection, great web framework.
- Debian is beeing 0wned because it lacks all of the above.
- Debian must survive.
- I think i've just burned my tost.
My 3 cents.
Member since:2005-07-06
Ubuntu would continue no matter what Canonical decides to do: http://www.ubuntu.com/news/UbuntuFoundation
I don't think the lack of a web forum is Debian's largest problem. IIRC, ubuntuforums.org wasn't started by Canonical or any core member of Ubuntu, but by some random Ubuntu user. There used to be a forum at http://www.debianhelp.org , but it seems to be dead. http://www.debian-administration.org is alive and kicking though.
Maybe Debian's problem is the gap between Debian Developers and users, and all the obstacles you need to pass in order to become a DD. OTOH, that process does, at least to a degree, ensure the quality of Debian developers. I'm not sure why you feel that the Debian infrastructure is outdated. The mailing lists, the BTS and Alioth seem to be working okay. Perhaps you could say that Debian as a community and as an organisation focuses on the developers, while Ubuntu has a lot more focus on the users.
BTW, I'm not usually a speling nazi, but could you at least try proof reading your comments once? Almost every single one of your sentences contains multiple spelling errors or typos. It makes reading a lot more difficult to read.
Member since:2005-11-05
I think some people (yourself included) don't really
understandwhat Ubuntu is really about. Mark is a
nationalist and loves South Africa. They don't
have the capital to pay for lots of Windows
licenses to Microsoft. He wants them to have a
high tech IT infrastructure as you have to in
this age to be competitive.
Debian is GREAT and very stable. However, it needs some
serious work on polish and integration. To work on this,
he started a nonprofit organization and gave them $10 Million.
Currently, Mark is funding Ubuntu out of his own pocket.
All he wants to happen is for it to fund itsself and
continue on to greatness.
All of the people who believe Ubuntu will kill Debian
and become evil are sadly misinformed. Take a look at
how the Shuttleworth Foundation is funding open source
initiatives in the African education system. Not
everyone is evil and out to get you, occasionally,
there are decent people who want to spread their blessings
to others. Mark Shuttleworth is one of those people and
is helping Linux on the desktop worldwide.
Member since:2005-12-04
I fear that the day will come when Debian is "dead" from the lack of userbase and a caring comunity, and if that day day actualy comes Canonical will have all the freedom in the world to turn Ubuntu into "Something Better" by forcing wierd-unholy-drm-eula like stuff down the Joe "Uncaring" User throat.
This really is a silly comment. If Debian dies, Ubuntu dies. Or at the very least, Ubuntu has to *become* Debian overnight. What many Ubuntu *users* don't seem to get is that Ubuntu directly benefits from the *enormous* development community Debian has. Sure, Debian isn't the most polished & exciting distro out there, but there are a TON of extremely capable developers making it reliable, stable & capable of being used as the foundations for distros like Ubuntu. This Debian development community makes it possible for Ubuntu's developers to focus on user interface & usability issues without spending all their time on the boring internals.
I don't think this attitude that Ubuntu is a replacement for Debian is universal, but I do fear many don't get that it's an *extension* of Debian in such a way that without Debian, there would be no Ubuntu (certainly not on a 6-month release cycle). I would very much like to see a distro that maintains a 6-month release cycle while providing the extroardinary stability and consistency of the Debian distro *without* Debian. It just doesn't exist.
Member since:
2005-07-08
He didn't need to spend money figuring out what people wanted. It was obvious, and it had been more quite some time:
For over a decade, Debian has been the most capable, extensive, and stable of the free Linux distributions. Unfortunately, the project leadership, release management, and community has consistently prevented Debian from achieving its primary goal of being the universal Linux distribution.
When Mark took a look at the state of the Linux ecosystem, it was plainly obvious that Debian needed new leadership, a new release management procedure, and a vibrant community. He realized that reforming the Debian project from the inside was futile, that a whole new project was necessary. That's where the money entered the equation.
Mark's investment in Ubuntu had long odds at best. I don't think that he could have expected the kind of success that Ubuntu has had, and even still he doesn't plan on seeing any net return on investment for several more years. The only explanation is that, as a skilled investor, he saw tremendous value in Debian that wasn't being realized effectively. He knew that fixing the problems with Debian would pay off eventually.
In the back of Mark's mind, I think he expects that eventually, most of the contribution to Debian will come from Ubuntu. Debian will never go away, but Ubuntu will drive the project. Ubuntu is not so much a fork of Debian as it is a fork of the Debian Project--a much more successful fork.