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Debian is my preferred distribution for servers, I'm simply in awe of what the community has achieved. Most of the good features that people associate with Ubun

Debian is my preferred distribution for servers, I'm simply in awe of what the community has achieved. Most of the good features that people associate with Ubuntu are actually in Debian, with none of the proprietary weirdness that creeps into Ubuntu year over year. The project does, however, sometimes have its share of people who dogmatic/pedantic to the point where it really doesn't help the cause. This might be expected from something that's a passion project for many of its contributors, and to Debian's credit, they've always been able to resolve these conflicts eventually. The article mentions the systemd drama. The recent kerfuffle around the 'which' command might be a smaller example of this kind of thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29026623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29026623 And note: As silly as that discussion was, when it got widespread attention, it was actually already resolved.

krzyk 5y ago
Regarding systemd, I'm not sure if majority wanted it. The fact that it heats the temperature means that it is not true, more like 50/50 are for/against.
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
  https://lwn.net/Articles/585319/ https://lwn.net/Articles/585319/ I didn't follow this at all at the time and thought it was something like 90% for. Turns out, it was closer to 50/50: > The vote came down much as expected, with a 4:4 split between systemd and Upstart proponents. Anthony Towns analyzed the votes and declared a tie between systemd and Upstart, which left it up to the chairman to decide by using the casting vote. Garbee did just that, voting for systemd, which makes it the Debian Linux default init for jessie.
  - secondaryacct 5y ago
    Thank God for that !
    - rektide 5y ago
      I'm very much in the "Thank God"-ish camp (if ya'll welcome others, non denominations & non-believers), but... wouldn't it be interesting if. It's convenient that we've consolidated down, but that famous freedom of choice seems to be circumscribed now by a ellipse with systemd at one focus point, and refusenik shell-script-only minimal pid1s at the other. Having a more active & ongoing paradigmatic discourse would have been interesting. So I kind of want a synopsis for upstart. These threads might provide some of that material. I'd touched upstart a couple times back so long ago, & the words "event-based" keep flashing before me, but I don't have much recall on upstart. What was it bad at? What didn't people like? What did people like? What was novel & interesting? What had potential but didn't quite work out? What was the best operational parts of it? There's so much tech in the world that doesn't quite make it, or which did make it & fell (CORBA), & we really need more Speakers For the Dead, people who can try to tell us the story of the tech earnestly, who can help us memorialize something by drawing together as much understanding, from as many points of view as they can.
      - teddyh 5y ago
        > I don't have much recall on upstart. What was it bad at? The author of systemd addresses this question in the original blog post which announced the systemd project (look under the heading “On Upstart”): http://0pointer.net/blog/projects/systemd http://0pointer.net/blog/projects/systemd
        robocat 5y ago
        What a great summary! In my words: systemd works from a dependency graph, and upstart uses procedural events (dependencies implicit in code). Upstart is still used by ChromiumOS: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/boot-design https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/...
- throwawaymanbot 5y ago
  I was for SystemD(isaster) initially. Then its "scope" turned in to a Poettering Vanity Project.
ryandrake 5y ago
I've been using Debian for both server and desktop work for years (wow, actually decades) now. I like that I don't have to fiddle with it. Once set up, it just works well, basically forever. No fear of running apt-get dist-upgrade and having to shave yaks for an afternoon getting everything working again. I have no need to live on the bleeding edge of every package update, and not a big fan of some of the choices made by Ubuntu and other Debian-based distributions, so Debian is perfect for me. I didn't even know Drama among the project maintainers existed, so they seem to have managed to keep personnel issues out of the actual software distribution, which is also a bonus.
- matmatmatmat 5y ago
  10x this. Install it. Set autoupdates. Come back in 3 years when it's time to think about upgrading to the next major release. Maybe don't upgrade, because, why? Everything works. I just want to keep things working. To be honest, Desktops reached their peak for me with Gnome 2. I'm using MATE and I'm good.
  - winrid 5y ago
    You can also use gnome-flashback which looks like Gnome 2. https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeFlashback https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeFlashback
- npsimons 5y ago
  > I've been using Debian for both server and desktop work for years (wow, actually decades) now. Same; I've yet to find anything more stable and well put together.
app4soft 5y ago
> The article mentions the systemd drama. Solution: switch to antiX, MX Linux or Devuan.
- BeetleB 5y ago
  Or Gentoo.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    Or *BSD.
    - app4soft 5y ago
      Or Haiku
fstrthnscnd 5y ago
> Most of the good features that people associate with Ubuntu are actually in Debian, with none of the proprietary weirdness that creeps into Ubuntu year over year. A lot of what you find in Debian also comes from what Ubuntu does. In fact, I believe that many people hired by Ubuntu in the early days were experienced maintainers for Debian. 20 years ago, the problem was all about getting Linux consumer desktop friendly. On the server side, it was mostly OK, people there were not afraid of a TTY, because it was the primary entry point to learning Linux, and Unix in general, whereas in the Windows world, people first approach was (and still is) the GUI. Debian wasn't as good as it is today in the desktop area. Ubuntu appeared on the market mainly to solve that problem (they were not the first ones to do that), and "leverage" on the acquired expertise to make money. Nowadays, the money is in servers and IoT, so they are focusing to that segment of the market. The nature of open source meant that of course, Debian benefits from their work.
jjav 5y ago
Personally I'm sad about debian. I've been debian-only user since ca. 2000. It was always the model for a stable, no nonsense distro where everything worked. People complained about slow change but to me that's a huge feature. I want the system to continue working for years, not constantly break with the latest API-breaking updates. The systemd drama of a few years back really soured me on debian though. On the plus side, it has made me explore OpenBSD and FreeBSD, both of which I use these days. Also I'm using Devuan where I need or want Linux. Still, I miss having the old debian which eschewed trendiness and valued stability more.
DangitBobby 5y ago
I wouldn't say it's "resolved" quite yet. I just saw the deprecation warning for the first time while using `which` in termux right after running an update.

krzyk 5y ago

Regarding systemd, I'm not sure if majority wanted it. The fact that it heats the temperature means that it is not true, more like 50/50 are for/against.

5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
https://lwn.net/Articles/585319/ https://lwn.net/Articles/585319/ I didn't follow this at all at the time and thought it was something like 90% for. Turns out, it was closer to 50/50: > The vote came down much as expected, with a 4:4 split between systemd and Upstart proponents. Anthony Towns analyzed the votes and declared a tie between systemd and Upstart, which left it up to the chairman to decide by using the casting vote. Garbee did just that, voting for systemd, which makes it the Debian Linux default init for jessie.
- secondaryacct 5y ago
  Thank God for that !
  - rektide 5y ago
    I'm very much in the "Thank God"-ish camp (if ya'll welcome others, non denominations & non-believers), but... wouldn't it be interesting if. It's convenient that we've consolidated down, but that famous freedom of choice seems to be circumscribed now by a ellipse with systemd at one focus point, and refusenik shell-script-only minimal pid1s at the other. Having a more active & ongoing paradigmatic discourse would have been interesting. So I kind of want a synopsis for upstart. These threads might provide some of that material. I'd touched upstart a couple times back so long ago, & the words "event-based" keep flashing before me, but I don't have much recall on upstart. What was it bad at? What didn't people like? What did people like? What was novel & interesting? What had potential but didn't quite work out? What was the best operational parts of it? There's so much tech in the world that doesn't quite make it, or which did make it & fell (CORBA), & we really need more Speakers For the Dead, people who can try to tell us the story of the tech earnestly, who can help us memorialize something by drawing together as much understanding, from as many points of view as they can.
    - teddyh 5y ago
      > I don't have much recall on upstart. What was it bad at? The author of systemd addresses this question in the original blog post which announced the systemd project (look under the heading “On Upstart”): http://0pointer.net/blog/projects/systemd http://0pointer.net/blog/projects/systemd
      - robocat 5y ago
        What a great summary! In my words: systemd works from a dependency graph, and upstart uses procedural events (dependencies implicit in code). Upstart is still used by ChromiumOS: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/boot-design https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/...
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
I was for SystemD(isaster) initially. Then its "scope" turned in to a Poettering Vanity Project.

ryandrake 5y ago

I've been using Debian for both server and desktop work for years (wow, actually decades) now. I like that I don't have to fiddle with it. Once set up, it just works well, basically forever. No fear of running apt-get dist-upgrade and having to shave yaks for an afternoon getting everything working again. I have no need to live on the bleeding edge of every package update, and not a big fan of some of the choices made by Ubuntu and other Debian-based distributions, so Debian is perfect for me. I didn't even know Drama among the project maintainers existed, so they seem to have managed to keep personnel issues out of the actual software distribution, which is also a bonus.

matmatmatmat 5y ago
10x this. Install it. Set autoupdates. Come back in 3 years when it's time to think about upgrading to the next major release. Maybe don't upgrade, because, why? Everything works. I just want to keep things working. To be honest, Desktops reached their peak for me with Gnome 2. I'm using MATE and I'm good.
- winrid 5y ago
  You can also use gnome-flashback which looks like Gnome 2. https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeFlashback https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeFlashback
npsimons 5y ago
> I've been using Debian for both server and desktop work for years (wow, actually decades) now. Same; I've yet to find anything more stable and well put together.

app4soft 5y ago

> The article mentions the systemd drama. Solution: switch to antiX, MX Linux or Devuan.

BeetleB 5y ago
Or Gentoo.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  Or *BSD.
  - app4soft 5y ago
    Or Haiku

fstrthnscnd 5y ago

> Most of the good features that people associate with Ubuntu are actually in Debian, with none of the proprietary weirdness that creeps into Ubuntu year over year. A lot of what you find in Debian also comes from what Ubuntu does. In fact, I believe that many people hired by Ubuntu in the early days were experienced maintainers for Debian. 20 years ago, the problem was all about getting Linux consumer desktop friendly. On the server side, it was mostly OK, people there were not afraid of a TTY, because it was the primary entry point to learning Linux, and Unix in general, whereas in the Windows world, people first approach was (and still is) the GUI. Debian wasn't as good as it is today in the desktop area. Ubuntu appeared on the market mainly to solve that problem (they were not the first ones to do that), and "leverage" on the acquired expertise to make money. Nowadays, the money is in servers and IoT, so they are focusing to that segment of the market. The nature of open source meant that of course, Debian benefits from their work.

jjav 5y ago

Personally I'm sad about debian. I've been debian-only user since ca. 2000. It was always the model for a stable, no nonsense distro where everything worked. People complained about slow change but to me that's a huge feature. I want the system to continue working for years, not constantly break with the latest API-breaking updates. The systemd drama of a few years back really soured me on debian though. On the plus side, it has made me explore OpenBSD and FreeBSD, both of which I use these days. Also I'm using Devuan where I need or want Linux. Still, I miss having the old debian which eschewed trendiness and valued stability more.

DangitBobby 5y ago

I wouldn't say it's "resolved" quite yet. I just saw the deprecation warning for the first time while using `which` in termux right after running an update.