Submitted by It is a common belief that Ubuntu provides newer software than Debian. This is of course true when Ubuntu is compared to Debian stable. This is also true for specific software packages, like Gnome. But how does it compare in general? Also, the Debian Installer team has released the third beta of its installer for Etch, the next version of Debian. According to the announcement, there is now an optional graphical installer for the i386 and amd64 platforms, and you can now set up encrypted partitions during installation. Not all features are present yet in this beta release and those that are may not be stable.
Ubuntu or Debian; Debian’s New Installer
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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The current installer isn’t bad; it’s ncurses and easy to use. Not like the old installer…UGH.
Are we REALLY having this thread of discussion here at OS News ? while I usually have none of both installed (Ubuntu is usually not exactly fast on my machine, and like debian has too much under the hood, I prefer simples distros, like arch) I have to say that this “Article” is a pathetic attempt to start a zealotry-war-of-flaming-balls that adds *nothing* to any of the groups.
Comparing distros with completely different objectives just because they’re based on the same foundations. Next we’re gonna start comparing Fedora Core with Red Hat’s whatever-the-name-for-the-enterprise-version-is, or something like that…
Gee…
I have to say that this “Article” is a pathetic attempt to start a zealotry-war-of-flaming-balls that adds *nothing* to any of the groups.
I totally agree. This snide and sarcastic so-called “article” is a total joke. I can’t believe OSNews would insult its users by providing a link to it.
This article is not really intended to start any sort of flame war. There are much more effective ways to start a flame war with the Ubuntu people. It seems more like you want to start one. So, here it is.
A comment like “I used Ubuntu for 3 months trying to figure out what all the fuss is about it, but to be honest I just don’t see it. I can think of 10 other distros that are as good or better”
That will get a bunch of responses like, “Ubuntu is about humanity. If you don’t like Ubuntu then you must be not like humanity”
To which someone will reply, “Ubuntu is not about humanity. It is about lining Mark Shuttleworth’s pockets with even more money than he already has.”
Then someone will say, “Mark Shuttleworth is generous benefactor. He cares about humanity and free software”
Then someone will reply, “Rich people do not become rich because they are generous. They become rich because they are greedy. Someday Mark Shuttleworth will want to profit off of Ubuntu, but first he has to get you dependant on it.”
Finally, someone will say, “He can’t be all about the profit. He sent me a free CD.”
At that point the discussion is over, cause you cannot argue with a free CD. I mean look at all the wonderful companies that send out free CD (ie. AOL) none of them are trying to screw you.
Flame war done.
the goal of (K)ubuntu is to provide a stable, tested basis on which a more up-to-date uservisible set of packages is provided, be it Gnome or KDE. So, at the time of release, the ‘core’ is some 4 months behind on debian ‘testing’, as it’s simply an updated and stabilized snapshot of it.
but: the ‘desktop packages’ like gnome and KDE, OpenOffice.org, firefox and the like, are often more up-to-date than the debian ‘testing’ packages.
Also, (K)ubuntu does more testing and patching on the most important packages, and includes several enhancements which aren’t be accepted nor used by debian.
And third, there are several configuration tools, and other applications which aren’t in debian, or come in (much) later.
fourth, let’s not forget debian does releases as well. and during a release, development on testing comes to a grinding halt, which might take several months in which their users fall way beyond what is available on other desktops.
fifth point: (K)ubuntu often champions new innovations, and delivers new stuff like Xgl to their users quickly.
and last, (K)ubuntu does provide newer versions of packages to their users, like KDE 3.5.x.
as such, for an user, (K)ubuntu is more up-to date than a Debian system at time of release, and long after that.
so lets look at things how they are: more complex than some numbers can show. we all know statistics lie…
I like how they added the ability to set up encrypted partitions at install time. Hopefully Ubuntu will add that to their Edgy installer. A utility to create an encrypted partition after install would also be nice (including /home, using pammount to access it using the user’s login so no additional password is needed). I’ve done it manually, but it’s a bit of work and easy to mess up your system if you’re not careful.
Anyone happen to have screenshots of the new GUI installer he is talking about?
Hard to judge without pictures :-@
Edited 2006-08-17 00:45
That’s what I was thinking. To be honest, I scanned the article for screenshots first, so I didn’t even bother reading it since it didn’t have any…
edit:
I’m talking about the second article. I didn’t even notice the first one ’till now.
Edited 2006-08-17 00:57
Screenshots of the GUI Debian Installer:
http://blog.thedebianuser.org/?p=79
Debian for the server because it was there, it works, it will be there tommorrow, it has a great community, making money is not part of the projects goal, and Debian is the rock Ubuntu is based on.
Ubuntu for desktops because it is flashier, it is cleaned up, and it has better support for non-free stuff.
I would like to agree, but I’ve got to admit that I haven’t tried installing Debian + Gnome for a desktop machine in quite a while.
I recently went Ubuntu on the desktop, and was amazed that, for example, printing worked with only the same amount of effort as a Windows or Mac box. Another thing that works on Ubuntu is when you run a GUI app from a terminal as root, it actually works instead of X complaining about privileges or somesuch.
Of course, regarding Debian on the servers, I agree. Debian Stable is where it’s at. Dunno why Etch Stable is coming so soon — feels like we just barely got Sarge Stable. That is: server-oriented distro time runs slower than desktop-oriented distro time.
It isn’t that Etch is coming so soon. It’s that Sarge took too long. There were a lot of changes going into Sarge, and they had too many bugs that kept being found, which meant the release kept being delayed. There was a bunch of talk in the Debian community acknowledging that they needed more timely releases, to avoid having repeat performances in the future.
And for people looking for screenshots, at: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/GUI
Go to the review section. The linux.com and Barry Hawkin’s Blog links each have a screenshot. It’s not much, but better than nothing.
You know, for all the laudatory praises I read heaped upon Debian for its new Installer, I’ve yet to see a single screenshot.
The main problem with debian is that they have not (till now) payed any attention to making this wonderful distribution newbie friendly. There is a big difference between a distribution meant for the server and one designed with the home user in mind. And it is wrong to mix one with the other. In my opinion, the one thing that Debian developers could do is to bring out a truly newbie friendly version of debian – one with no unnecessary services listening on the internet ports, the latest version of packages as well as need for minimal end-user interaction at the time of installing it.
The success of ubuntu is that they acknowledged this fact and rose to the occation to bring out a truly newbie friendly linux distribution.
Also I am not insisting on a GUI installer. Only that the installer (even though text based) make all the best choices for the user instead of forcing the user to make choices.
On that note, I find freebsd installer (even though text based) very clear in providing the choices to the end user.
Edited 2006-08-17 05:18
one with no unnecessary services listening on the internet ports
Gee. Ever heard that it’s only listening if you install it ? And if it’s unnecessary for you, why would you install it in the first place ? If you install it because you don’t know what it is, and then you wonder why some service is listening on some ports, well, there’s no protection from these kinds of users. One of my favourite properties of debian has always been that it gives you a working base install in minutes and then you’re totally free to build your own system, with only what you feel you’ll need. That’s the same reason I also like Gentoo and some other distros too. I never liked distros which make you choose from something like: workstation, server, customized, where the latter means usually browsing through packages by hand.
About that “truly newbie friendly version” of yours… please, I don’t want to see that, ever.
About that “truly newbie friendly version” of yours… please, I don’t want to see that, ever.
I think this attitude is the reason that debian is not getting the popularity it truly deserves. It is not right to think that all people who associate with computers know how to use it the right way let alone take technical decisions while installing it.
I always come across people who do not know the difference between windows and linux. Heck, there are people who do not know how to handle a mouse. And these people are in the majority. In such a scenario, it is always a good decision to simplify the installation process. Of course if debian can get a deal with the PC manufacturers to pre-install it on the machines they manufacture, then this view may not be important. But that is not going to happen in the near future. So simplifying the installation process becomes very important.
Debian developers could also consider bringing out a live cd.
So simplifying the installation process becomes very important.
Yes indefinite wouldn’t call it simplify but convenience great debian supports so many different platforms and languages.However i get the impression that more time is spend on maintaining the huge repository for the different platforms than on the actual OS.No problem with that,its a benefit for stability when development is conservative.
While you could make with varying degrees of effort a versatile desktop out of any OS,debian has never been the most convenient one.A lot of people see ease of use equivalent to a overall less competent userbase.I’m into computers from ’84 till now and have practically used most OS’s.Ubuntu just works.I think it’s not for nothing the most popular Linux at the moment.
I wouldn’t dare to degrade the users capability of deciding what works and what doesn’t.
Edited 2006-08-17 11:27
It really isn’t all that difficult to install the newer debians. Even Sarge was extremely easy. Now pre-Sarge, the installer stunk, and you really had to know what hardware you had in your system.
With tasksel being installed at first, all you really need to do is tell it “desktop environment”, wait a while, and then you have a fully working Gnome
there are a few limitations for the encrypted disk support, but both dm-crypt and loop-aes are supported!
more:
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/News/2006/20060811#cry…
Maybe the Debian project could embrace one of the installable desktop LiveCDs based upon it, such as Kanotix or Elive, instead of starting a newbie friendly version from scratch. I dunno.
Moreover, about the installer. One thing they need to fix is the partition managers detection of file system selected for the /boot directory. Now it is possible to select systems which are not supported by lilo or grub and have the installer fail at the end, after having downloaded all packages and more or less finished the installation. How should I know you can not have /boot on XFS?
>> How should I know you can not have /boot on XFS?
And when you choose /boot on XFS, lilo fails to install, grub too, their processes stay in system as a zombie and you can’t continue instalation
.
Anywany, second time I choosed ext3 and everything went smooth
The screenshot really is mandatory for a graphical tool article.
Once upon a time, I ran Debian on my desktop and my home servers: stable for the servers and unstable for the desktop. For a desktop, Debian unstable was pretty bad and stable was antiquated. Either use no new software or have the X config file overwritten everytime someone updated a font. Sometimes, package maintaners did not even bother testing their own packages before uploading them. If one of them had done so, he never would have been able to upload it, since his package hosed all networking.
Asking for any help was to open yourself to ridicule. I remember when Open Office was first released, I asked on IRC if there were plans to get it into Debian. The response was that they would never allow such a piece of bloatware into Debian and if I wanted it, go compile it myself.
Ubuntu: An ancient African word meaning “Sick of dealing with Debian.”
Ubuntu: An ancient African word meaning “Sick of dealing with Debian.”
Ubuntu gets most of it packages from Debian, so Debian cannot really be as bad as you say if you like Ubuntu.
Once upon a time, I ran Debian on my desktop and my home servers: stable for the servers and unstable for the desktop.
You know, GNU/Linux on the desktop has become a lot better during the last few years. Try Debian unstable now and you probably won’t find it much different from Ubuntu (except it’s not so brown :-).
I remember when Open Office was first released, I asked on IRC if there were plans to get it into Debian. The response was that they would never allow such a piece of bloatware into Debian and if I wanted it, go compile it myself.
You’ll be happy to learn that Debian has had Open Office packaged and available via apt-get for quite some time now — no compiling is necessary.
Ubuntu gets most of it packages from Debian, so Debian cannot really be as bad as you say if you like Ubuntu.
Debian is awsome,a rough diamond.Ubuntu has cut the diamond ready for the juweler.
Debian is awsome,a rough diamond.Ubuntu has cut the diamond ready for the juweler.
You cannot always trust those damn jewelers…
Even if most of Ubuntu’s packages come from Debian, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Ubuntu would meet Debian’s high quality standards (that you refer to as “diamond”). About 2/3 of Ubuntu’s packages belong to the “universe” component that is “community maintained” (whatever that means) and they don’t receive bug fixes or security updates from the official Ubuntu developers.
It seems to me that while Debian is 100% pure diamond, the cunning jeweler who made Ubuntu gave its surface some extra polish and then made the inside from sandstone or something… Ubuntu may be shinier but it’s not as precious as the genuine jewel, Debian.