7 ms·

Why I’m Leaving Ubuntu for Debian

67 points by recoiledsnake 14y ago

cowmix 14y ago
I've switched to Lubuntu and I could not be happier.
- crdoconnor 14y ago
  I switched recently too, and I like the minimalism, but I've noticed that pcmanfm and the taskbar seem to crash an awful lot.
zoowar 14y ago
You've always been Debian.
dobbsbob 14y ago
Never switched from debian to ubuntu lts madness, but I did switch from debian to openbsd after the ssl random number entropy boondoggle
adamman 14y ago
The author should get rid of that "spotlight" or move the option to turn it off above the fold.
reklis 14y ago
archlinux #ftw
- robertfw 14y ago
  I'll second that. Despite the warnings of "it's a lot of work to maintain!", I've only had one minor glitch which was my own fault - I didn't read the update news before doing a full update. When that happened, the steps to recover were all clearly laid out in the very excellent arch wiki. My experience with ubuntu was that when something went wrong, there was no easy way to deduce exactly what had happened, or what to do to fix it. The forums were full of similar symptoms with different causes. I've also become much more knowledgeable about the way linux, and OSes in general, work thanks to the closer relationship arch makes you foster with your machine.
rlpb 14y ago
All of Debian is available in Ubuntu. His objections appear to be: He doesn't like Ubuntu switching away from GNOME (presumably 2) by default. Except that Debian have moved to GNOME 3 as well, which is why GNOME 2 is no longer available in Ubuntu. However, GNOME 3 is available in Ubuntu, so all he's really complaining about is the default. He doesn't like Ubuntu One, except that in Ubuntu it's merely something that's available. Your experience is exactly the same as Debian's if you don't use it. He doesn't like Ubuntu Software Centre. Except that you don't have to use it. apt-get and Synaptic are available and work just fine in Ubuntu. Software available from the Software Centre includes software not part of Ubuntu itself. Thus it doesn't violate any rules about Ubuntu itself. Debian is the same - third parties publish .deb files, and these don't have to comply with any Debian guidelines either. Yet Debian ships dpkg, which allows one to install them. He complains that he can't find the "Ubuntu Manifesto". I'm not sure of the exact document he's referring to, but the principles he's referring to and quotes can be found in one click from http://www.ubuntu.com http://www.ubuntu.com: http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy [edit: apologies, two clicks; "About Ubuntu" and then "Philosophy". Still, not exactly hidden] Then he complains about Unity again, except that he doesn't need to use it. GNOME 3 is available in Ubuntu, along with Xfce and LXDE, and you can get these by default if you use Xubuntu or Lubuntu install images. Then he complains about Ubuntu not focusing on privacy. Ubuntu introduced a single central place to manage your privacy settings in 12.04 (http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/02/privacy-controls-minor-ui-tweaks-land-in-ubuntu-12-04 http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/02/privacy-controls-minor-ui...). The privacy settings he's complaining about can be controlled from here. Again, all his complaint boils down to is what the default is. So, given that everything in Debian is available in Ubuntu, his article "Why I'm Leaving Ubuntu for Debian" can be summarised to one word: "principle". And perhaps you might want to add "defaults", except that Xubuntu and Lubuntu are available and provide defaults that eliminate all of his complaints. He's entitled to this view, of course, but the rest is FUD.
- holri 14y ago
  Trust is an important factor in choosing software and justifiable so. Ubuntu is no longer trustworthy for a lot of people.
gejjaxxita 14y ago
I really don't get the big deal, I use Ubuntu with Gnome3 and I don't get any advertising from Amazon or bugging me to use Ubuntu One. I understand that from a moral/philosophical/ethical stand point these things can irritate people about Ubuntu, but I mainly just want an OS that works and find Ubuntu to be that.
trts 14y ago
I still like the purer Gnome experience that comes with Debian, but since Ubuntu works out of the box with my laptop's wireless card, I just use the Ubuntu 12.04 "mini.iso" and pick the "gnome" metapackage during install. The only real difference then between the resulting environment vs. Debian is that Ubuntu have somehow coupled Unity with Gnome, such that you still get booted into a stripped down version of the Unity shell. But if you log out and back into Gnome, there's practically no difference between Ubuntu LTS/Debian Testing.
j_s 14y ago
Good point re: 'the Ubuntu Software Center selling proprietary software [...] goes directly against the Ubuntu Manifesto'. http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy > every computer user: Should have the freedom to download, run, > copy, distribute, study, share, change and improve their software for > any purpose, without paying licensing fees.
- rlpb 14y ago
  Software available in the Software Center includes software that is not part of Ubuntu. Ubuntu's rules only covers software that is part of Ubuntu.
  - j_s 14y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to disagree. Do you speak on behalf of Ubuntu in any official capacity? I'm simply reading the statement as it is written: 'their software', not 'their Ubuntu software'.
micahflee 14y ago
I'm the author. Sorry the site is down, I'm hosting it on a cheap VPS with 512mb and a single core. And it's running apache and php. Apparently being hammered by both reddit and hackernews at the same time is too much. Working on fixing it though, and it should be up again soon.
- slashclee 14y ago
  Where's the article about how you're leaving PHP for statically-generated content? ;)
  - micahflee 14y ago
    Touche!
  - metaperl 14y ago
    lol
- amalag 14y ago
  Digitalocean?
  - micahflee 14y ago
    Yup, $5/month. https://www.digitalocean.com/ https://www.digitalocean.com/
- micahflee 14y ago
  Ok, the site should be back up if your DNS has updated. It's now sitting behind cloudflare. Load on the server is still at like 13 though, so clearly everyone's DNS hasn't updated yet. If you want to read it quicker, add this to your /etc/hosts: 190.93.254.39 micahflee.com
desigooner 14y ago
I have an old Dell lying around that i use as a linux machine and I recently moved from Ubuntu to Crunchbang (#!). So far, I'm digging the minimalism and the zippiness.
Nursie 14y ago
I run debian on an old NAS, on a microserver, on a variety of netbooks and laptops, some old NSLU2s, a plug computer, several work machines, a mainframe emulator... It's awesome. It works everywhere and it works consistently. It's funny to think the reason that I initially made the switch from Ubuntu was as trivial as the audio drivers on my vaio breaking on every dist-upgrade so that I had to build alsa from source twice a year. I've had a look at 'buntu again recently as I've been given a Xubuntu machine at work, and I haven't yet worked out debian for my chromebook. Xubuntu is pretty...
jtanderson 14y ago
Anybody else inline-edit the page to set the post's background to white? :P
bad_user 14y ago
For what is worth, on my old laptop, after Ubuntu switched to Unity I hated every bit of it and nothing made it better with every version I tried. The main problem was that the interface was sluggish. Switching to Unity 2D made it better, but on the other hand Unity 2D was missing functionality and still sluggish compared to Xfce. But I just got a new laptop. It's a Thinkpad with an Intel HD 4000 graphics card and everything just worked out of the box - graphics, wifi, web cam, sound, everything. And funny thing, now I like Unity and in fact the problem with my old laptop was the graphics card I was using - some kind of Geforce and thinking about it, all the problems I ever had can be traced back to it and the proprietary drivers I kept installing. My old laptop is still around and so I gave the Nouveau drivers a chance. I was surprised at how well Nouveau worked with Unity. So a word to the wise if you want to try out Unity or Gnome Shell ... (1) prefer Intel HD graphics over Geforce and if that's not an option (2) give Nouveau a try!
adjin 14y ago
i returned to ubuntu and I'm pretty happy with it. it lets you have the kind of system you want while taking care of stuff that's usually a burden to set up
mergy 14y ago
Google Cache Copy of it >> Why I’m Leaving Ubuntu for Debian | Micah Lee http://mer.gy/MLWILUFD http://mer.gy/MLWILUFD
mergy 14y ago
Google Cache Copy Of It (crazy long so short URL) Why I’m Leaving Ubuntu for Debian | Micah Lee http://mer.gy/MLWILUFD http://mer.gy/MLWILUFD
iuguy 14y ago
There's an old joke that the word "Ubuntu" is the Swahili for "Can't install Debian". Ubuntu is aimed at beginners and people that don't want to fiddle around (too much). Earlier distros were very very good and very useable compared to others, so they attracted a lot of users. When Vista came out there was an influx of Linux newbies. At some point Canonical decided they needed to make money from Ubuntu, so deals like the Amazon search come in. Obviously they're still aiming for the goal they were originally looking for (an easy to use distro for people to switch to) but their actions are alienating some of the more technical users who wanted a quieter life compared to other distros. Unless something changes to retain the more tech savvy users (and those users that have grown to be more tech savvy because of Ubuntu's low barrier to entry) I wouldn't be surprised if we see a brain drain in the Ubuntu community as the more technical flee to Arch, Debian and Mint.
- gems 14y ago
  You're trolling. 1. Ubuntu comes with a more modern kernel than any Debian release. 2. If you don't care about system internals, then you're probably more productive with ubuntu than with, say, arch. 3. I've never used mint, but based on its description, it seems to be even friendlier to beginners, so I don't really understand your point.
- subsection1h 14y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if we see a brain drain in the Ubuntu community as the more technical flee to Arch, Debian and Mint. Last time I distro hopped, Mint didn't offer expert mode for installation. So for me, one of the the "more technical", Mint was even an option.
fiendsan 14y ago
i sympathize and agree with most points! ubuntu is awesome, but some of their decisions seem to be more in their interest than in the users interest, but since im too used to ubuntu now, i moved to mint about a year ago! its kinda ubuntu without the bullshit! ^_^
hfs 14y ago
Xubuntu is a great alternative to Ubuntu if you want the Debian minimalism with a few of the unobtrusive Ubuntu extras.
h2s 14y ago
I'm planning to make the same switch at some point during 2013 and for similar reasons. Privacy erosion and aggressive upsell of proprietary software are not issues that I ever anticipated encountering as a Linux user.
Shorel 14y ago
On the other hand, I just rediscovered Linux two months ago thanks to Ubuntu. I'm running Ubuntu in AWS. I'm running Ubuntu in my main PC. I'm running Ubuntu in my laptop. I'm running Ubuntu at job in a Virtual Machine. I love Unity. All the other distros look like the SuSE or the Mandrake I used a decade ago. Meanwhile OSX and Win7 happened. Unity looks new and nice. It has better user friendliness than the other distros. Yes, I want user friendliness. I installed Slackware in something close to a hundred diskettes. I compiled thousand upon thousand packages in Gentoo. I now realize how pointless those installs were. Ubuntu just works and Unity makes it great. The only thing I would install instead of Unity is Macbuntu 10.04, but now it is too outdated and the external package repositories stay unsigned.

67 points by recoiledsnake 14y ago

cowmix 14y ago

I've switched to Lubuntu and I could not be happier.

crdoconnor 14y ago
I switched recently too, and I like the minimalism, but I've noticed that pcmanfm and the taskbar seem to crash an awful lot.

zoowar 14y ago

You've always been Debian.

dobbsbob 14y ago

Never switched from debian to ubuntu lts madness, but I did switch from debian to openbsd after the ssl random number entropy boondoggle

adamman 14y ago

The author should get rid of that "spotlight" or move the option to turn it off above the fold.

reklis 14y ago

archlinux #ftw

robertfw 14y ago
I'll second that. Despite the warnings of "it's a lot of work to maintain!", I've only had one minor glitch which was my own fault - I didn't read the update news before doing a full update. When that happened, the steps to recover were all clearly laid out in the very excellent arch wiki. My experience with ubuntu was that when something went wrong, there was no easy way to deduce exactly what had happened, or what to do to fix it. The forums were full of similar symptoms with different causes. I've also become much more knowledgeable about the way linux, and OSes in general, work thanks to the closer relationship arch makes you foster with your machine.

rlpb 14y ago

All of Debian is available in Ubuntu. His objections appear to be: He doesn't like Ubuntu switching away from GNOME (presumably 2) by default. Except that Debian have moved to GNOME 3 as well, which is why GNOME 2 is no longer available in Ubuntu. However, GNOME 3 is available in Ubuntu, so all he's really complaining about is the default. He doesn't like Ubuntu One, except that in Ubuntu it's merely something that's available. Your experience is exactly the same as Debian's if you don't use it. He doesn't like Ubuntu Software Centre. Except that you don't have to use it. apt-get and Synaptic are available and work just fine in Ubuntu. Software available from the Software Centre includes software not part of Ubuntu itself. Thus it doesn't violate any rules about Ubuntu itself. Debian is the same - third parties publish .deb files, and these don't have to comply with any Debian guidelines either. Yet Debian ships dpkg, which allows one to install them. He complains that he can't find the "Ubuntu Manifesto". I'm not sure of the exact document he's referring to, but the principles he's referring to and quotes can be found in one click from http://www.ubuntu.com http://www.ubuntu.com: http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy [edit: apologies, two clicks; "About Ubuntu" and then "Philosophy". Still, not exactly hidden] Then he complains about Unity again, except that he doesn't need to use it. GNOME 3 is available in Ubuntu, along with Xfce and LXDE, and you can get these by default if you use Xubuntu or Lubuntu install images. Then he complains about Ubuntu not focusing on privacy. Ubuntu introduced a single central place to manage your privacy settings in 12.04 (http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/02/privacy-controls-minor-ui-tweaks-land-in-ubuntu-12-04 http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/02/privacy-controls-minor-ui...). The privacy settings he's complaining about can be controlled from here. Again, all his complaint boils down to is what the default is. So, given that everything in Debian is available in Ubuntu, his article "Why I'm Leaving Ubuntu for Debian" can be summarised to one word: "principle". And perhaps you might want to add "defaults", except that Xubuntu and Lubuntu are available and provide defaults that eliminate all of his complaints. He's entitled to this view, of course, but the rest is FUD.

holri 14y ago
Trust is an important factor in choosing software and justifiable so. Ubuntu is no longer trustworthy for a lot of people.

gejjaxxita 14y ago

I really don't get the big deal, I use Ubuntu with Gnome3 and I don't get any advertising from Amazon or bugging me to use Ubuntu One. I understand that from a moral/philosophical/ethical stand point these things can irritate people about Ubuntu, but I mainly just want an OS that works and find Ubuntu to be that.

trts 14y ago

I still like the purer Gnome experience that comes with Debian, but since Ubuntu works out of the box with my laptop's wireless card, I just use the Ubuntu 12.04 "mini.iso" and pick the "gnome" metapackage during install. The only real difference then between the resulting environment vs. Debian is that Ubuntu have somehow coupled Unity with Gnome, such that you still get booted into a stripped down version of the Unity shell. But if you log out and back into Gnome, there's practically no difference between Ubuntu LTS/Debian Testing.

j_s 14y ago

Good point re: 'the Ubuntu Software Center selling proprietary software [...] goes directly against the Ubuntu Manifesto'. http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy > every computer user: Should have the freedom to download, run, > copy, distribute, study, share, change and improve their software for > any purpose, without paying licensing fees.

rlpb 14y ago
Software available in the Software Center includes software that is not part of Ubuntu. Ubuntu's rules only covers software that is part of Ubuntu.
- j_s 14y ago
  Thanks for taking the time to disagree. Do you speak on behalf of Ubuntu in any official capacity? I'm simply reading the statement as it is written: 'their software', not 'their Ubuntu software'.

micahflee 14y ago

I'm the author. Sorry the site is down, I'm hosting it on a cheap VPS with 512mb and a single core. And it's running apache and php. Apparently being hammered by both reddit and hackernews at the same time is too much. Working on fixing it though, and it should be up again soon.

slashclee 14y ago
Where's the article about how you're leaving PHP for statically-generated content? ;)
- micahflee 14y ago
  Touche!
- metaperl 14y ago
  lol
amalag 14y ago
Digitalocean?
- micahflee 14y ago
  Yup, $5/month. https://www.digitalocean.com/ https://www.digitalocean.com/
micahflee 14y ago
Ok, the site should be back up if your DNS has updated. It's now sitting behind cloudflare. Load on the server is still at like 13 though, so clearly everyone's DNS hasn't updated yet. If you want to read it quicker, add this to your /etc/hosts: 190.93.254.39 micahflee.com

desigooner 14y ago

I have an old Dell lying around that i use as a linux machine and I recently moved from Ubuntu to Crunchbang (#!). So far, I'm digging the minimalism and the zippiness.

Nursie 14y ago

I run debian on an old NAS, on a microserver, on a variety of netbooks and laptops, some old NSLU2s, a plug computer, several work machines, a mainframe emulator... It's awesome. It works everywhere and it works consistently. It's funny to think the reason that I initially made the switch from Ubuntu was as trivial as the audio drivers on my vaio breaking on every dist-upgrade so that I had to build alsa from source twice a year. I've had a look at 'buntu again recently as I've been given a Xubuntu machine at work, and I haven't yet worked out debian for my chromebook. Xubuntu is pretty...

jtanderson 14y ago

Anybody else inline-edit the page to set the post's background to white? :P

bad_user 14y ago

For what is worth, on my old laptop, after Ubuntu switched to Unity I hated every bit of it and nothing made it better with every version I tried. The main problem was that the interface was sluggish. Switching to Unity 2D made it better, but on the other hand Unity 2D was missing functionality and still sluggish compared to Xfce. But I just got a new laptop. It's a Thinkpad with an Intel HD 4000 graphics card and everything just worked out of the box - graphics, wifi, web cam, sound, everything. And funny thing, now I like Unity and in fact the problem with my old laptop was the graphics card I was using - some kind of Geforce and thinking about it, all the problems I ever had can be traced back to it and the proprietary drivers I kept installing. My old laptop is still around and so I gave the Nouveau drivers a chance. I was surprised at how well Nouveau worked with Unity. So a word to the wise if you want to try out Unity or Gnome Shell ... (1) prefer Intel HD graphics over Geforce and if that's not an option (2) give Nouveau a try!

adjin 14y ago

i returned to ubuntu and I'm pretty happy with it. it lets you have the kind of system you want while taking care of stuff that's usually a burden to set up

mergy 14y ago

Google Cache Copy of it >> Why I’m Leaving Ubuntu for Debian | Micah Lee http://mer.gy/MLWILUFD http://mer.gy/MLWILUFD

mergy 14y ago

Google Cache Copy Of It (crazy long so short URL) Why I’m Leaving Ubuntu for Debian | Micah Lee http://mer.gy/MLWILUFD http://mer.gy/MLWILUFD

iuguy 14y ago

There's an old joke that the word "Ubuntu" is the Swahili for "Can't install Debian". Ubuntu is aimed at beginners and people that don't want to fiddle around (too much). Earlier distros were very very good and very useable compared to others, so they attracted a lot of users. When Vista came out there was an influx of Linux newbies. At some point Canonical decided they needed to make money from Ubuntu, so deals like the Amazon search come in. Obviously they're still aiming for the goal they were originally looking for (an easy to use distro for people to switch to) but their actions are alienating some of the more technical users who wanted a quieter life compared to other distros. Unless something changes to retain the more tech savvy users (and those users that have grown to be more tech savvy because of Ubuntu's low barrier to entry) I wouldn't be surprised if we see a brain drain in the Ubuntu community as the more technical flee to Arch, Debian and Mint.

gems 14y ago
You're trolling. 1. Ubuntu comes with a more modern kernel than any Debian release. 2. If you don't care about system internals, then you're probably more productive with ubuntu than with, say, arch. 3. I've never used mint, but based on its description, it seems to be even friendlier to beginners, so I don't really understand your point.
subsection1h 14y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if we see a brain drain in the Ubuntu community as the more technical flee to Arch, Debian and Mint. Last time I distro hopped, Mint didn't offer expert mode for installation. So for me, one of the the "more technical", Mint was even an option.

fiendsan 14y ago

i sympathize and agree with most points! ubuntu is awesome, but some of their decisions seem to be more in their interest than in the users interest, but since im too used to ubuntu now, i moved to mint about a year ago! its kinda ubuntu without the bullshit! ^_^

hfs 14y ago

Xubuntu is a great alternative to Ubuntu if you want the Debian minimalism with a few of the unobtrusive Ubuntu extras.

h2s 14y ago

I'm planning to make the same switch at some point during 2013 and for similar reasons. Privacy erosion and aggressive upsell of proprietary software are not issues that I ever anticipated encountering as a Linux user.

Shorel 14y ago

On the other hand, I just rediscovered Linux two months ago thanks to Ubuntu. I'm running Ubuntu in AWS. I'm running Ubuntu in my main PC. I'm running Ubuntu in my laptop. I'm running Ubuntu at job in a Virtual Machine. I love Unity. All the other distros look like the SuSE or the Mandrake I used a decade ago. Meanwhile OSX and Win7 happened. Unity looks new and nice. It has better user friendliness than the other distros. Yes, I want user friendliness. I installed Slackware in something close to a hundred diskettes. I compiled thousand upon thousand packages in Gentoo. I now realize how pointless those installs were. Ubuntu just works and Unity makes it great. The only thing I would install instead of Unity is Macbuntu 10.04, but now it is too outdated and the external package repositories stay unsigned.