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<sarcasm>Thanks Ubuntu for sending this update so quickly!</sarcasm> I never really thought of Ubuntu as a bleeding-edge distribution, but it seems more and mo

<sarcasm>Thanks Ubuntu for sending this update so quickly!</sarcasm> I never really thought of Ubuntu as a bleeding-edge distribution, but it seems more and more like one lately. It used to be the distro that "just works". Now, I find myself dealing with more and more bugs as the years go. Debian stable is probably too conservative for a workstation - is there a happy medium distro out there?

martey 14y ago
Ubuntu pulls some packages from Debian unstable, so if you find Debian stable too conservative, and unstable too broken, testing might be a workable compromise: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting http://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting I personally have found that Debian unstable is more stable that Ubuntu, but my tolerance for bugs might be different than yours.
drivebyacct2 14y ago
So someone put out a stable build, someone with plenty of history and name recognition, Ubuntu pushed this out to users quickly and you fault them for it? If you want Debian Stable, go install Debian Stable.
sciurus 14y ago
Ubuntu has decided to closely track Firefox releases because Mozilla doesn't provide security updates for older Firefox versions. I'm not sure what other software receives major version updates within the lifetime of an Ubuntu release (Chromium?), but it's not the norm. Debian hasn't adapted this policy yet; they still declare a version of Firefox stable and backport patches to it. They've had to switch the name and logos from Firefox to Iceweasel because Mozilla does not allow anyone to independently provide updates and still use the Firefox trademark. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/Lucid/FirefoxNewSupportModel https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/Lucid/FirefoxNewSu... http://wiki.debian.org/Iceweasel http://wiki.debian.org/Iceweasel
- cookiecaper 14y ago
  Which makes sense. If you change Firefox, it's no longer the real Firefox, it's a derivative work. Allowing derivative works to use your trademark without careful review and blessing is surely dangerous and misrepresentative.
  - nash 14y ago
    Take a look at the patches that ubuntu does apply. In this case there is more than a little politics involved.
  - sciurus 14y ago
    This is going off on a tangent, but in comparison to other free software projects Mozilla is unusually strict about trademarks. LibreOffice, for instance, has a policy that says You can use their trademark if you are 'substantially unmodified', which means "built from the source code provided by TDF, possibly with minor modifications including but not limited to: the enabling or disabling of certain features by default, translations into other languages, changes required for compatibility with a particular operating system distribution, the inclusion of bug-fix patches, or the bundling of additional fonts, templates, artwork and extensions)." Mike Connor from Mozilla has said that to use the Mozilla trademarks, you have to get prior approval from them for your build configuration and every patch you introduce. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=74;bug=354622 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=74;bug=3546...
    - gcp 14y ago
      Does The Document Foundation receive any income from their distribution of LibreOffice?
- pja 14y ago
  There's an LTS Firefox version these days: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/ http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/ (I believe Debian is now basing the iceweasel browser in Debian stable/testing on this release.)
dfc 14y ago
How about debian/testing? Personally I run unstable and have never had any issue that I could not deal with.
werid 14y ago
Linux Mint perhaps.

martey 14y ago

Ubuntu pulls some packages from Debian unstable, so if you find Debian stable too conservative, and unstable too broken, testing might be a workable compromise: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting http://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting I personally have found that Debian unstable is more stable that Ubuntu, but my tolerance for bugs might be different than yours.

drivebyacct2 14y ago

So someone put out a stable build, someone with plenty of history and name recognition, Ubuntu pushed this out to users quickly and you fault them for it? If you want Debian Stable, go install Debian Stable.

sciurus 14y ago

Ubuntu has decided to closely track Firefox releases because Mozilla doesn't provide security updates for older Firefox versions. I'm not sure what other software receives major version updates within the lifetime of an Ubuntu release (Chromium?), but it's not the norm. Debian hasn't adapted this policy yet; they still declare a version of Firefox stable and backport patches to it. They've had to switch the name and logos from Firefox to Iceweasel because Mozilla does not allow anyone to independently provide updates and still use the Firefox trademark. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/Lucid/FirefoxNewSupportModel https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/Lucid/FirefoxNewSu... http://wiki.debian.org/Iceweasel http://wiki.debian.org/Iceweasel

cookiecaper 14y ago
Which makes sense. If you change Firefox, it's no longer the real Firefox, it's a derivative work. Allowing derivative works to use your trademark without careful review and blessing is surely dangerous and misrepresentative.
- nash 14y ago
  Take a look at the patches that ubuntu does apply. In this case there is more than a little politics involved.
- sciurus 14y ago
  This is going off on a tangent, but in comparison to other free software projects Mozilla is unusually strict about trademarks. LibreOffice, for instance, has a policy that says You can use their trademark if you are 'substantially unmodified', which means "built from the source code provided by TDF, possibly with minor modifications including but not limited to: the enabling or disabling of certain features by default, translations into other languages, changes required for compatibility with a particular operating system distribution, the inclusion of bug-fix patches, or the bundling of additional fonts, templates, artwork and extensions)." Mike Connor from Mozilla has said that to use the Mozilla trademarks, you have to get prior approval from them for your build configuration and every patch you introduce. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=74;bug=354622 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=74;bug=3546...
  - gcp 14y ago
    Does The Document Foundation receive any income from their distribution of LibreOffice?
pja 14y ago
There's an LTS Firefox version these days: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/ http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/ (I believe Debian is now basing the iceweasel browser in Debian stable/testing on this release.)

dfc 14y ago

How about debian/testing? Personally I run unstable and have never had any issue that I could not deal with.

werid 14y ago

Linux Mint perhaps.