4 ms·

Would this be a good time to migrate from Ubuntu?

dsr_ 14y ago
Certainly. Wheezy is the new "stable", which will get security support for a year past the introduction of the next stable release. It's an excellent choice for servers, and right now it's not a bad desktop release. In another year or so you might want to move to the testing release for a desktop that needs the latest features.
- eropple 14y ago
  Debian testing won't have "the latest features" a year from now, though. I guess it'll have "later features", but IME desktops really benefit from tracking unstable. Which, as one might expect, is sometimes...unstable. Enter Ubuntu. There's a pretty good reason to use Debian on servers because of the long support cycles, but on a desktop I feel like most people are going to probably prefer an Ubuntu setup.
  - oinksoft 14y ago
    Once, this was a valid comparison (Ubuntu/Sid). Now Ubuntu is a strange beast, a world apart from other distros in goals and just in the basic desktop experience. aptosid is probably a better choice if you want a more stable Sid these days without the Ubuntu kaleidoscope.
  - dfc 14y ago
    I have used unstable as my main desktop for over a decade now.[1] At first there were occasional issues but these went away as I became more experienced with debian. It has been years since I encountered a bug that caused me to lose more than an hour of productivity. The most recent issue that I have had with unstable was over a year ago and it was simply a matter of pinning a version of libcairo. The only reason I remember this so well is that someone else on HN was having trouble and my comment[2] on how to fix it was my highest rated comment at the time. [1] To be honest I actually run a mixed system with a few packages (not just oneoffs but big things like xmonad/iceweasel/awesome/git/pandoc/git-annex/gitit) from experimental. If it has been a long time (5-7 years) since you tried unstable you can think of experimental as what unstable used to be. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3907796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3907796
  - thristian 14y ago
    Debian has historically run on an approximately 2-year release cycle (and more recent releases have been closer to that cadence). Right now, Testing is kind of old, because it's been frozen in the run-up to the Wheezy release. In a month or two, Testing will probably be mostly current, and will stay that way until about 18 months' time when the Jessie freeze kicks in, and then it'll be a slow wait until the release of Jessie and then the cycle repeats. Ubuntu is too... opinionated for my tastes, and other distros are too conservative (CentOS/RHEL) or too wild (Arch, Gentoo). Debian Testing seems to have a high-quality, comprehensive package archive and keep reasonably up-to-date, and if the price to pay is that for six months every two years you get a stable desktop environment instead... no complaints from me. EDIT: The usual lag between Testing and Unstable is 10 days, except in big, complicated transitions and dependencies (say, when a commonly used shared library is being upgraded to a new, incompatible ABI). Again, I could probably be more up-to-date if I tracked Unstable instead of Testing, but I'd rather wait for Debian to nail down its migration plan in Unstable so I can upgrade smoothly, rather than have the latest and greatest and have to rebuild my own packages occasionally.
- mverwijs 14y ago
  That really depends on your desktop. For my daily life, I use Firefox (iceweasel), Google Chrome, a terminal, some ruby or python. All of these have a channel for installing the latest version of their software without having to dist-upgrade. XFCE hasn't had a notable UI change in years (at least not discernable to me). KDE and GNOME have only mucked things up over the last decade.
oinksoft 14y ago
Just make sure you're not on "testing" if you're doing this for a desktop (note that it is uncommon to run "testing" on a server). This release means that Sid ("unstable") just became "testing". Now, many folks are running Sid fine on their desktops, but historically the Sid -> testing push is volatile in the short term, and you probably would want to wait a couple weeks. Basically, be wary of "testing" after a release.
- cdjk 14y ago
  Not quite. Sid is always unstable, and the new testing is jessie: http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/ http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/ Otherwise you're right - now it probably not the best time to switch to jessie/testing.
  - tshepang 14y ago
    I would think Testing is pretty much safe, since all the new packages have to live a bit in Sid (10 days by default) before they reach Testing, so they get some testing. The only issue I know with Testing is temporary removals of some packages to help with these transitions.
eropple 14y ago
I'm not, because I find Debian's KVM support to be not what I expect, but if you don't like Ubuntu for whatever reason, it's not a bad time to do it. That said, Debian stable means you'd better be happy with what you have for a very long time unless you want to deal with the often-painful stable->testing or stable->unstable migration. (It can be done, I've done it many times, but expect it to break something.) Personally, I just use Ubuntu. It's Debian unstable but shinier. :)
- kbar13 14y ago
  and with upstart &co
  - mverwijs 14y ago
    I'm unable to determine if you mean upstart to be a Good Thing, or a Bad Thing, or anything in between. To me, switching back from Ubuntu to Debian was a blessing. And I simply cannot understand this need to decrease boottimes. My laptop boots into Debian under 12 seconds. That is pretty fast. Under Ubuntu, I timed it at 10 seconds. 2 seconds boottime? Is that what this upstart/systemd hastle is all about? I just do not get that.
    - ludwigvan 14y ago
      ""Well, let's say you can shave 10 seconds off of the boot time. Multiply that by five million users and thats 50 million seconds, every single day. Over a year, that's probably dozens of lifetimes. So if you make it boot ten seconds faster, you've saved a dozen lives. That's really worth it, don't you think?" " http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Saving_Lives.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Saving_Lives.txt
      - mverwijs 14y ago
        I don't know. I mean, the trend has been hand-held devices and laptops for the past decade or so. They don't get booted every day and will be less and less. All the while, devices are getting faster hardware, making the difference even less. Too me, it still seems not worth breaking a working standard (SysV) over.
jebblue 14y ago
If you're running Ubuntu Desktop and want to run modern game systems like Steam then I think you'd want to stay on Ubuntu.
- lgp171188 14y ago
  https://github.com/GhostSquad57/Steam-Installer-for-Wheezy https://github.com/GhostSquad57/Steam-Installer-for-Wheezy
  - psionski 14y ago
    That's what I used for my Debian unstable + Mint "Steam box", it works perfectly. P.S. Mint provides only Firefox.
  - nona 14y ago
    Steam's actually in experimental these days, just apt-get install steam/experimental and be on your way :)

dsr_ 14y ago

Certainly. Wheezy is the new "stable", which will get security support for a year past the introduction of the next stable release. It's an excellent choice for servers, and right now it's not a bad desktop release. In another year or so you might want to move to the testing release for a desktop that needs the latest features.

eropple 14y ago
Debian testing won't have "the latest features" a year from now, though. I guess it'll have "later features", but IME desktops really benefit from tracking unstable. Which, as one might expect, is sometimes...unstable. Enter Ubuntu. There's a pretty good reason to use Debian on servers because of the long support cycles, but on a desktop I feel like most people are going to probably prefer an Ubuntu setup.
- oinksoft 14y ago
  Once, this was a valid comparison (Ubuntu/Sid). Now Ubuntu is a strange beast, a world apart from other distros in goals and just in the basic desktop experience. aptosid is probably a better choice if you want a more stable Sid these days without the Ubuntu kaleidoscope.
- dfc 14y ago
  I have used unstable as my main desktop for over a decade now.[1] At first there were occasional issues but these went away as I became more experienced with debian. It has been years since I encountered a bug that caused me to lose more than an hour of productivity. The most recent issue that I have had with unstable was over a year ago and it was simply a matter of pinning a version of libcairo. The only reason I remember this so well is that someone else on HN was having trouble and my comment[2] on how to fix it was my highest rated comment at the time. [1] To be honest I actually run a mixed system with a few packages (not just oneoffs but big things like xmonad/iceweasel/awesome/git/pandoc/git-annex/gitit) from experimental. If it has been a long time (5-7 years) since you tried unstable you can think of experimental as what unstable used to be. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3907796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3907796
- thristian 14y ago
  Debian has historically run on an approximately 2-year release cycle (and more recent releases have been closer to that cadence). Right now, Testing is kind of old, because it's been frozen in the run-up to the Wheezy release. In a month or two, Testing will probably be mostly current, and will stay that way until about 18 months' time when the Jessie freeze kicks in, and then it'll be a slow wait until the release of Jessie and then the cycle repeats. Ubuntu is too... opinionated for my tastes, and other distros are too conservative (CentOS/RHEL) or too wild (Arch, Gentoo). Debian Testing seems to have a high-quality, comprehensive package archive and keep reasonably up-to-date, and if the price to pay is that for six months every two years you get a stable desktop environment instead... no complaints from me. EDIT: The usual lag between Testing and Unstable is 10 days, except in big, complicated transitions and dependencies (say, when a commonly used shared library is being upgraded to a new, incompatible ABI). Again, I could probably be more up-to-date if I tracked Unstable instead of Testing, but I'd rather wait for Debian to nail down its migration plan in Unstable so I can upgrade smoothly, rather than have the latest and greatest and have to rebuild my own packages occasionally.
mverwijs 14y ago
That really depends on your desktop. For my daily life, I use Firefox (iceweasel), Google Chrome, a terminal, some ruby or python. All of these have a channel for installing the latest version of their software without having to dist-upgrade. XFCE hasn't had a notable UI change in years (at least not discernable to me). KDE and GNOME have only mucked things up over the last decade.

oinksoft 14y ago

Just make sure you're not on "testing" if you're doing this for a desktop (note that it is uncommon to run "testing" on a server). This release means that Sid ("unstable") just became "testing". Now, many folks are running Sid fine on their desktops, but historically the Sid -> testing push is volatile in the short term, and you probably would want to wait a couple weeks. Basically, be wary of "testing" after a release.

cdjk 14y ago
Not quite. Sid is always unstable, and the new testing is jessie: http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/ http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/ Otherwise you're right - now it probably not the best time to switch to jessie/testing.
- tshepang 14y ago
  I would think Testing is pretty much safe, since all the new packages have to live a bit in Sid (10 days by default) before they reach Testing, so they get some testing. The only issue I know with Testing is temporary removals of some packages to help with these transitions.

eropple 14y ago

I'm not, because I find Debian's KVM support to be not what I expect, but if you don't like Ubuntu for whatever reason, it's not a bad time to do it. That said, Debian stable means you'd better be happy with what you have for a very long time unless you want to deal with the often-painful stable->testing or stable->unstable migration. (It can be done, I've done it many times, but expect it to break something.) Personally, I just use Ubuntu. It's Debian unstable but shinier. :)

kbar13 14y ago
and with upstart &co
- mverwijs 14y ago
  I'm unable to determine if you mean upstart to be a Good Thing, or a Bad Thing, or anything in between. To me, switching back from Ubuntu to Debian was a blessing. And I simply cannot understand this need to decrease boottimes. My laptop boots into Debian under 12 seconds. That is pretty fast. Under Ubuntu, I timed it at 10 seconds. 2 seconds boottime? Is that what this upstart/systemd hastle is all about? I just do not get that.
  - ludwigvan 14y ago
    ""Well, let's say you can shave 10 seconds off of the boot time. Multiply that by five million users and thats 50 million seconds, every single day. Over a year, that's probably dozens of lifetimes. So if you make it boot ten seconds faster, you've saved a dozen lives. That's really worth it, don't you think?" " http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Saving_Lives.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Saving_Lives.txt
    - mverwijs 14y ago
      I don't know. I mean, the trend has been hand-held devices and laptops for the past decade or so. They don't get booted every day and will be less and less. All the while, devices are getting faster hardware, making the difference even less. Too me, it still seems not worth breaking a working standard (SysV) over.

jebblue 14y ago

If you're running Ubuntu Desktop and want to run modern game systems like Steam then I think you'd want to stay on Ubuntu.

lgp171188 14y ago
https://github.com/GhostSquad57/Steam-Installer-for-Wheezy https://github.com/GhostSquad57/Steam-Installer-for-Wheezy
- psionski 14y ago
  That's what I used for my Debian unstable + Mint "Steam box", it works perfectly. P.S. Mint provides only Firefox.
- nona 14y ago
  Steam's actually in experimental these days, just apt-get install steam/experimental and be on your way :)