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> I'd love to hear why, i'm just curious Although Ubuntu is a glorified copy of Debian, the components that Ubuntu changes tend to be brittle and unstable, and

> I'd love to hear why, i'm just curious Although Ubuntu is a glorified copy of Debian, the components that Ubuntu changes tend to be brittle and unstable, and not adequately justified. If anyone wants an OS that helps them get stuff done, not mess with their work, and not even break between major upgrades, Debian is the way to go.

qznc 9y ago
There was a time when Ubuntu had hugely better usability than Debian. Nowdays, Debian has mostly closed the gap. Thank you Canonical for the competition! Ubuntu/Canonical has lost its focus on the desktop. Desktops are boring now. Servers are more profitable and the entry to mobile has failed. Maybe another window has opened for some desktop innovation now? I would try to copy stuff from Android. Snap [0] is a promising way to deploy apps (in general, self-contained stuff you cannot depend on), even commercial/proprietary ones. The "app store" is terrible, though. Androids intents might be worthwhile to copy to decouple things. Androids activity lifecycle might be interesting. All of this requires a large-scale long-term reengineering of deeper layers, which is practically impossible for hobbyists. You will get hit a lot by people for being not-Unixy (see systemd) and only after years of slog you might be able to show a superior desktop. On the other hand, there is no money to be made with desktops, so why should a company approach such a risky project? [0] https://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/snappy https://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/snappy
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago
  > Thank you Canonical for the competition One of those examples where competition does not help at all. Many desktop users and contributors moved to Ubuntu and stopped contributing to Debian. A good number slowly moved back to Debian in the last 5 years.
  - qznc 9y ago
    I believe it helped. Canonical invested in usability and raised the bar in general. Maybe for clarification, I'm thinking about stuff like the Papercuts initiative [0] in 2009. There is a similar situation with clang and gcc. Clang improved error messages and raised the bar. Gcc follows. It would probably not have improved on its own. [0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/06/canonical-to-boost-ubuntu-usability-by-tackling-papercuts/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/06/canon...
  - coffee9 9y ago
    Many of those contributions get backported, it's certainly been a net benefit.
pjmlp 9y ago
A glorified copy that actually works with my hardware out of the box. Debian, I don’t even bother.
- geezerjay 9y ago
  That's only possible if you pay no attention to the hardware you buy. The last time I had to do any post-install config with a linux distro was when I installed kubuntu 5.10 and since Debian 4 onward I never experienced any problem. Then of course companies like Google are immune to this sort of issue as they even design and sell linux hardware.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Sure it is. Even on the Asus EEE 1215B that I bought with Linux pre-installed, I had issues with my wlan card.

qznc 9y ago

There was a time when Ubuntu had hugely better usability than Debian. Nowdays, Debian has mostly closed the gap. Thank you Canonical for the competition! Ubuntu/Canonical has lost its focus on the desktop. Desktops are boring now. Servers are more profitable and the entry to mobile has failed. Maybe another window has opened for some desktop innovation now? I would try to copy stuff from Android. Snap [0] is a promising way to deploy apps (in general, self-contained stuff you cannot depend on), even commercial/proprietary ones. The "app store" is terrible, though. Androids intents might be worthwhile to copy to decouple things. Androids activity lifecycle might be interesting. All of this requires a large-scale long-term reengineering of deeper layers, which is practically impossible for hobbyists. You will get hit a lot by people for being not-Unixy (see systemd) and only after years of slog you might be able to show a superior desktop. On the other hand, there is no money to be made with desktops, so why should a company approach such a risky project? [0] https://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/snappy https://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/snappy

eeZah7Ux 9y ago
> Thank you Canonical for the competition One of those examples where competition does not help at all. Many desktop users and contributors moved to Ubuntu and stopped contributing to Debian. A good number slowly moved back to Debian in the last 5 years.
- qznc 9y ago
  I believe it helped. Canonical invested in usability and raised the bar in general. Maybe for clarification, I'm thinking about stuff like the Papercuts initiative [0] in 2009. There is a similar situation with clang and gcc. Clang improved error messages and raised the bar. Gcc follows. It would probably not have improved on its own. [0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/06/canonical-to-boost-ubuntu-usability-by-tackling-papercuts/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/06/canon...
- coffee9 9y ago
  Many of those contributions get backported, it's certainly been a net benefit.

pjmlp 9y ago

A glorified copy that actually works with my hardware out of the box. Debian, I don’t even bother.

geezerjay 9y ago
That's only possible if you pay no attention to the hardware you buy. The last time I had to do any post-install config with a linux distro was when I installed kubuntu 5.10 and since Debian 4 onward I never experienced any problem. Then of course companies like Google are immune to this sort of issue as they even design and sell linux hardware.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Sure it is. Even on the Asus EEE 1215B that I bought with Linux pre-installed, I had issues with my wlan card.