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I wish PinePhone would partner with Arch or Debian instead. Word. Debian is great! In the past when I see people using Ubuntu, I always wondered why? It is so

I wish PinePhone would partner with Arch or Debian instead. Word. Debian is great! In the past when I see people using Ubuntu, I always wondered why? It is so interesting how people in tech just fall into the fashion trap.

msla 6y ago
Because coming from Slackware and OpenBSD, Debian's install process was too big of a pain to deal with.
ISL 6y ago
My probably-flawed remembrance of the situation, as a Debian (2001+)/Gentoo(2004-8) user: Canonical showed up to the party with a substantial concerted and sustained effort of funding/developers to take the existing Debian framework and make it more user-friendly. In particular, Ubuntu was willing to package substantially non-free software into the experience. Things like Flash just worked most of the time. There was a substantial emphasis on usability, so that Linux-on-the-desktop could reach people with less background knowledge (everyone was doing this, of course, but Ubuntu seemed to put less emphasis on other things). When Ubuntu emerged, Debian users were concerned that Ubuntu would take over the DFSG-software world and make it, in the long run, less free. What turned out to happen, in this case, was that the approachability of Ubuntu, built atop the Debian foundation, drew many more users away from RedHat/Fedora and ultimately strengthened the Debian/Ubuntu userbase and ecosystem. The usability really mattered -- I've repaired the occasional Debian system with Ubuntu boot-disks simply because the drivers, at the time, worked better. Thanks to the intrinsic properties of open-source development, many of the good things about Ubuntu have found their way into Debian (and GNU/Linux at large). The Debian of today is a much more-readily usable experience than the Debian of 2004 thanks to the work of a great many people.
- Foxboron 6y ago
  This is also thanks to Ubuntus commitment to contribute back to Debian and ensure there is a synergy. The same can't be said for Manjaro. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Ubuntu/ForDebianDevelopers https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Ubuntu/ForDebianDevelopers
- mayama 6y ago
  Getting wifi and sound working with new laptops was a chore or hit and miss with Debian or Fedora at the time. Ubuntu worked on a lot of these issues.
throwaway49872 6y ago
Canonical contributes very little back to Debian. But they do a lot of marketing.
- simion314 6y ago
  Why do you say that exactly? When Canonical developer fixed GNOME infamous bugs aren't those contribution getting into Debian? My impression is that Ubuntu always respected Debian and always encouraged all fixes to happen upsteeam, for example for new packages you can see that Ubuntu is asking people to submit them to Debian (so everyone benefits) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/NewPackages#NEW_packages_through_Debian https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/NewPackages#NEW_pa...
josteink 6y ago
> when I see people using Ubuntu, I always wondered why? As someone (still) using Ubuntu today, I have 1 simple answer: OOB experience. Back in the days, I could insert a Ubuntu live-CD (remember CDs?), and have a fully working system, including proprietary graphics-driver and wifi-firmware. And installing from that Live-CD gave me the same experience once installed. Basically, it was a machine 100% ready to use, with everything autodetected, with absolutely zero manual effort. Debian otoh required me to hook up a wired network connection (because those had free drivers), and then manually track down which packages contained the proprietary drivers and firmware I needed. That single thing made a world of difference to me back then, and it still does today.
- tjr225 6y ago
  Yep. It's the only distro that works by default on my 2009 Macbook Pro.
dx87 6y ago
> In the past when I see people using Ubuntu, I always wondered why? Because I don't have a wired internet connection, and my wifi adapter requires proprietary drivers. If I could just download and install from an ISO like I can with Ubuntu, I'd switch to Debian in a heartbeat, but I don't feel like having to do manual workarounds just to get a running Linux distro.
- mkesper 6y ago
  use one of the (unofficial) images containing non-free firmware: https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-firmware/ https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images...
  - symlinkk 6y ago
    > unofficial And there lies the problem.
    - ncmncm 6y ago
      But not any sort of actual one--do you imagine that "unofficial" has a technical meaning of greater significance than that Debian people don't care for proprietary binary blobs?
- Freak_NL 6y ago
  Installing Debian 11 on a seven year old laptop to test something involved Debian helpfully mentioning it was missing network drivers and couldn't continue (okay), which effectively meant searching the internet for the files mentioned on another computer (dubious). Because this laptop was being used exclusively to test something on Debian 11 (openssh-server with U2F support) I just settled for some random GitHub repo with the driver binary (the only place I could find it). Not a great user experience. The Ubuntu way is to suggest installing non-free drivers from the same reputable source as the rest of the distro: by clicking your assent right there in the installer.
- squarefoot 6y ago
  The Debian site makes hard to find the operating system images containing binary firmware for various devices, but they're all there. Another poster published the right link, however should you some day not have it handy, a search for "debian firmware image" will lead you to it both on DuckDuckGo and Google.
squarefoot 6y ago
> I see people using Ubuntu, I always wondered why? It is so interesting how people in tech just fall into the fashion trap. I would rather attribute it to advertising, and probably some contracts with the right people. Canonical did a lot of advertising in the past years, and contracts can mean a school mandates the installation of Ubuntu, which translates in hundreds of students becoming accustomed to it, together with some of their parents and friends, and so on. This is something completely out of the reach for a community supported distribution like Debian; attempting to change it would mean putting a corporation behind it, which would be a recipe for destruction of its principles.
monoideism 6y ago
> In the past when I see people using Ubuntu, I always wondered why? Debian is great. I particularly respect Debian as an organization. On my home laptop, I've used Debian, Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc etc. But on my work computer, I've always used Ubuntu (or sometimes MacOS), because: - I prefer Ubuntu LTS to Debian's testing/stable approach. - Lots of other devs use Ubuntu, so instructions are often focused on the distro - It's always had all the drivers I need packaged with the distro - Smaller projects are more likely to set up a PPA than host their own package repository.
- genghizkhan 6y ago
  > I prefer Ubuntu LTS to Debian's testing/stable approach. May I ask why?
  - markstos 6y ago
    It's nice that Ubuntu has been very predictable getting releases out on a schedule, while Debian's approach has been "when it's ready", which could sometimes be a very long time between stable releases.
    - genghizkhan 6y ago
      Debian's been on a 2-year release cadence since at least 2007. I agree, they don't come out like clockwork the way Ubuntu LTS editions or macOS do but they come out in the first half of the year they're supposed to. At worst it's 2.5 years between releases at best it's under 2 years.
  - monoideism 6y ago
    Because I like having a stable system with a known "good for" date, rather than "when it's ready". I particularly like using LTS for systems that I don't want to have to touch very often...just set unattended security updates on and leave it be. I realize I could do something similar with Debian, but testing isn't generally stable enough for the use cases I have in mind, whereas stable gets stuck with some very old packages. If I need a new package toward the end of the lifespan of a LTS, I can often find PPA. If not, I'll just compile it myself. It's just my preference. To be honest, probably a big part is that Ubuntu is mostly what I've used the past decade.
Barrin92 6y ago
>I always wondered why? for me personally easier to use installer, proprietary driver/codec support out of the box, faster release cycle, debian stable is too old for me and unstable can break at at all times/doesn't receive any major updates before new releases and so on. Also Ubuntu for the longest time used to be the only distro shipping with good font rendering settings, staring at code all day this actually was fairly important to me so basically Ubuntu 'just works', if I ran Debian I'd just replicate Ubuntu's default settings pretty much anyway so I can just save myself the few hours.
- owowow 6y ago
  Unstable aka Sid receives updates always, I think your thinking of Testing which goes into a freeze period before each major release of Debian. Sid has been quite stable for me, the packages are much newer than Ubuntu (generally on par with Arch or close to it) and the few noteworthy bugs I have seen over the years have been reported and handled within 24 to 48hrs of said package being updated with the problematic code.
svvcfb1212 6y ago
It is so interesting how people in tech jump to baseless conclusions about others' behavior that differs from their own... Personally, I shifted to Ubuntu since it removed headaches re: getting a system running out of the box. By the time i shifted in ~2011 I had already transitioned through SLS -> Slackware -> RedHat -> Debian over the 1993-2011 period. After 18 years, Ubuntu brought relief in that I didn't have to deal with fiddling with things to get a system up and running. At that point the fun-factor of fiddling with the system had worn off and I was mostly concerned with getting work done, which Ubuntu addressed. Last time I tried Debian (~4 years ago?), it felt like it had caught up in terms of the out-of-the-box experience, which was nice.
bwanab 6y ago
In 2006, I had a brand new asus laptop. I first tried To install Debian. Then I tried Fedora, or Redhat, I don’t remember when that split was. My next try was Ubuntu, which went without a hitch. Since it’s always worked for me, I’ve stuck with it. This was after several years of running Redhat, Suse and Debian on desktops, so I wasn’t a newbie.
- freedomben 6y ago
  I had a similar experience, although I went back to Fedora around 2013 and was amazed at how good it has gotten. If you're happy then no reason to change, but if you are mad about Snap or any of the other issues of the day, give Fedora another try. It's really great at the "just works" these days while still staying super fresh.
ncmncm 6y ago
It really comes down to installers with proprietary firmware blobs that you need to install on laptops. Debian's download page makes it hard to find the images with the non-free bits. They're there, though, if you dig just a bit. Then, on laptops that have both Intel and Nvidia graphics hardware, for some reason the installers insist on loading both the i915 and nouveau kernel modules, which then fight over the console. (I asked over at the nouveau IRC, and they said a one-liner patch would fix that, still after all these years.) So, you add "nouveau.modeset=0" to the boot line on those laptops. Finally, there is the confusion over the name "unstable", which is what people using Debian run, at least for the parts that need to be up to date, like browsers, media players (mpv), and firmware. But the experience once you have got set up is better than on Ubuntu.

msla 6y ago

Because coming from Slackware and OpenBSD, Debian's install process was too big of a pain to deal with.

ISL 6y ago

My probably-flawed remembrance of the situation, as a Debian (2001+)/Gentoo(2004-8) user: Canonical showed up to the party with a substantial concerted and sustained effort of funding/developers to take the existing Debian framework and make it more user-friendly. In particular, Ubuntu was willing to package substantially non-free software into the experience. Things like Flash just worked most of the time. There was a substantial emphasis on usability, so that Linux-on-the-desktop could reach people with less background knowledge (everyone was doing this, of course, but Ubuntu seemed to put less emphasis on other things). When Ubuntu emerged, Debian users were concerned that Ubuntu would take over the DFSG-software world and make it, in the long run, less free. What turned out to happen, in this case, was that the approachability of Ubuntu, built atop the Debian foundation, drew many more users away from RedHat/Fedora and ultimately strengthened the Debian/Ubuntu userbase and ecosystem. The usability really mattered -- I've repaired the occasional Debian system with Ubuntu boot-disks simply because the drivers, at the time, worked better. Thanks to the intrinsic properties of open-source development, many of the good things about Ubuntu have found their way into Debian (and GNU/Linux at large). The Debian of today is a much more-readily usable experience than the Debian of 2004 thanks to the work of a great many people.

Foxboron 6y ago
This is also thanks to Ubuntus commitment to contribute back to Debian and ensure there is a synergy. The same can't be said for Manjaro. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Ubuntu/ForDebianDevelopers https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Ubuntu/ForDebianDevelopers
mayama 6y ago
Getting wifi and sound working with new laptops was a chore or hit and miss with Debian or Fedora at the time. Ubuntu worked on a lot of these issues.

throwaway49872 6y ago

Canonical contributes very little back to Debian. But they do a lot of marketing.

simion314 6y ago
Why do you say that exactly? When Canonical developer fixed GNOME infamous bugs aren't those contribution getting into Debian? My impression is that Ubuntu always respected Debian and always encouraged all fixes to happen upsteeam, for example for new packages you can see that Ubuntu is asking people to submit them to Debian (so everyone benefits) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/NewPackages#NEW_packages_through_Debian https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/NewPackages#NEW_pa...

josteink 6y ago

> when I see people using Ubuntu, I always wondered why? As someone (still) using Ubuntu today, I have 1 simple answer: OOB experience. Back in the days, I could insert a Ubuntu live-CD (remember CDs?), and have a fully working system, including proprietary graphics-driver and wifi-firmware. And installing from that Live-CD gave me the same experience once installed. Basically, it was a machine 100% ready to use, with everything autodetected, with absolutely zero manual effort. Debian otoh required me to hook up a wired network connection (because those had free drivers), and then manually track down which packages contained the proprietary drivers and firmware I needed. That single thing made a world of difference to me back then, and it still does today.

tjr225 6y ago
Yep. It's the only distro that works by default on my 2009 Macbook Pro.

dx87 6y ago

> In the past when I see people using Ubuntu, I always wondered why? Because I don't have a wired internet connection, and my wifi adapter requires proprietary drivers. If I could just download and install from an ISO like I can with Ubuntu, I'd switch to Debian in a heartbeat, but I don't feel like having to do manual workarounds just to get a running Linux distro.

mkesper 6y ago
use one of the (unofficial) images containing non-free firmware: https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-firmware/ https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images...
- symlinkk 6y ago
  > unofficial And there lies the problem.
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    But not any sort of actual one--do you imagine that "unofficial" has a technical meaning of greater significance than that Debian people don't care for proprietary binary blobs?
Freak_NL 6y ago
Installing Debian 11 on a seven year old laptop to test something involved Debian helpfully mentioning it was missing network drivers and couldn't continue (okay), which effectively meant searching the internet for the files mentioned on another computer (dubious). Because this laptop was being used exclusively to test something on Debian 11 (openssh-server with U2F support) I just settled for some random GitHub repo with the driver binary (the only place I could find it). Not a great user experience. The Ubuntu way is to suggest installing non-free drivers from the same reputable source as the rest of the distro: by clicking your assent right there in the installer.
squarefoot 6y ago
The Debian site makes hard to find the operating system images containing binary firmware for various devices, but they're all there. Another poster published the right link, however should you some day not have it handy, a search for "debian firmware image" will lead you to it both on DuckDuckGo and Google.

squarefoot 6y ago

> I see people using Ubuntu, I always wondered why? It is so interesting how people in tech just fall into the fashion trap. I would rather attribute it to advertising, and probably some contracts with the right people. Canonical did a lot of advertising in the past years, and contracts can mean a school mandates the installation of Ubuntu, which translates in hundreds of students becoming accustomed to it, together with some of their parents and friends, and so on. This is something completely out of the reach for a community supported distribution like Debian; attempting to change it would mean putting a corporation behind it, which would be a recipe for destruction of its principles.

monoideism 6y ago

> In the past when I see people using Ubuntu, I always wondered why? Debian is great. I particularly respect Debian as an organization. On my home laptop, I've used Debian, Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc etc. But on my work computer, I've always used Ubuntu (or sometimes MacOS), because: - I prefer Ubuntu LTS to Debian's testing/stable approach. - Lots of other devs use Ubuntu, so instructions are often focused on the distro - It's always had all the drivers I need packaged with the distro - Smaller projects are more likely to set up a PPA than host their own package repository.

genghizkhan 6y ago
> I prefer Ubuntu LTS to Debian's testing/stable approach. May I ask why?
- markstos 6y ago
  It's nice that Ubuntu has been very predictable getting releases out on a schedule, while Debian's approach has been "when it's ready", which could sometimes be a very long time between stable releases.
  - genghizkhan 6y ago
    Debian's been on a 2-year release cadence since at least 2007. I agree, they don't come out like clockwork the way Ubuntu LTS editions or macOS do but they come out in the first half of the year they're supposed to. At worst it's 2.5 years between releases at best it's under 2 years.
- monoideism 6y ago
  Because I like having a stable system with a known "good for" date, rather than "when it's ready". I particularly like using LTS for systems that I don't want to have to touch very often...just set unattended security updates on and leave it be. I realize I could do something similar with Debian, but testing isn't generally stable enough for the use cases I have in mind, whereas stable gets stuck with some very old packages. If I need a new package toward the end of the lifespan of a LTS, I can often find PPA. If not, I'll just compile it myself. It's just my preference. To be honest, probably a big part is that Ubuntu is mostly what I've used the past decade.

Barrin92 6y ago

>I always wondered why? for me personally easier to use installer, proprietary driver/codec support out of the box, faster release cycle, debian stable is too old for me and unstable can break at at all times/doesn't receive any major updates before new releases and so on. Also Ubuntu for the longest time used to be the only distro shipping with good font rendering settings, staring at code all day this actually was fairly important to me so basically Ubuntu 'just works', if I ran Debian I'd just replicate Ubuntu's default settings pretty much anyway so I can just save myself the few hours.

owowow 6y ago
Unstable aka Sid receives updates always, I think your thinking of Testing which goes into a freeze period before each major release of Debian. Sid has been quite stable for me, the packages are much newer than Ubuntu (generally on par with Arch or close to it) and the few noteworthy bugs I have seen over the years have been reported and handled within 24 to 48hrs of said package being updated with the problematic code.

svvcfb1212 6y ago

It is so interesting how people in tech jump to baseless conclusions about others' behavior that differs from their own... Personally, I shifted to Ubuntu since it removed headaches re: getting a system running out of the box. By the time i shifted in ~2011 I had already transitioned through SLS -> Slackware -> RedHat -> Debian over the 1993-2011 period. After 18 years, Ubuntu brought relief in that I didn't have to deal with fiddling with things to get a system up and running. At that point the fun-factor of fiddling with the system had worn off and I was mostly concerned with getting work done, which Ubuntu addressed. Last time I tried Debian (~4 years ago?), it felt like it had caught up in terms of the out-of-the-box experience, which was nice.

bwanab 6y ago

In 2006, I had a brand new asus laptop. I first tried To install Debian. Then I tried Fedora, or Redhat, I don’t remember when that split was. My next try was Ubuntu, which went without a hitch. Since it’s always worked for me, I’ve stuck with it. This was after several years of running Redhat, Suse and Debian on desktops, so I wasn’t a newbie.

freedomben 6y ago
I had a similar experience, although I went back to Fedora around 2013 and was amazed at how good it has gotten. If you're happy then no reason to change, but if you are mad about Snap or any of the other issues of the day, give Fedora another try. It's really great at the "just works" these days while still staying super fresh.

ncmncm 6y ago

It really comes down to installers with proprietary firmware blobs that you need to install on laptops. Debian's download page makes it hard to find the images with the non-free bits. They're there, though, if you dig just a bit. Then, on laptops that have both Intel and Nvidia graphics hardware, for some reason the installers insist on loading both the i915 and nouveau kernel modules, which then fight over the console. (I asked over at the nouveau IRC, and they said a one-liner patch would fix that, still after all these years.) So, you add "nouveau.modeset=0" to the boot line on those laptops. Finally, there is the confusion over the name "unstable", which is what people using Debian run, at least for the parts that need to be up to date, like browsers, media players (mpv), and firmware. But the experience once you have got set up is better than on Ubuntu.