Why I’m Leaving Ubuntu for Debian

https://micahflee.com/2013/01/why-im-leaving-ubuntu-for-debian/

by recoiledsnake • 13 years ago

67 67 13 years ago

cowmix• 13 years ago

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

crdoconnor• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

You've always been Debian.

dobbsbob• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

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

reklis• 13 years ago

archlinux #ftw

robertfw• 13 years 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.

rlpb4• 13 years 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/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...). 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.

john61• 13 years ago

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

fiendsan2• 13 years ago

you hit the nail! they certainly dont act like people you can trust, their motto now is the same as apple! that they know best!

gejjaxxita2• 13 years ago

The only point I slightly disagree with you on is privacy - here's my reasoning: Some defaults are visible, you see them and think "that's annoying, I'd better figure out a way to change it". Invisible defaults like privacy settings can be a lot more insidious, especially when (for better or worse) you expect your OS to treat your information very privately.

Ubuntu seem to hide the privacy settings a little bit (even that link you sent, the privacy section isn't properly explained, just a vague reference to "files activity"). When I read your post about the central place to manage privacy settings I thought "wow really?" went there and changed them.

Now on the other hand, you might argue this is all my fault for not taking the time to find out about my privacy settings...

rlpb4• 13 years ago

> Invisible defaults like privacy settings can be a lot more insidious, especially when (for better or worse) you expect your OS to treat your information very privately.

It is treated privately - it gets anonymized, so there's no privacy violation going on in the first place. There's a notice on the Dash that gives you the details, which is visible any time the search box is visible. And the box is a global search box. Do you expect privacy when you search in a Google search box also?

> Now on the other hand, you might argue this is all my fault for not taking the time to find out about my privacy settings...

No. My argument is that your privacy isn't violated with default settings in the first place. For the truly paranoid, you can still turn it off. But if you have that level of paranoia, you'd better audit all the source code on your system yourself. Do you know, for example, the details of how Chrome and Firefox anonymize URLs you visit for blacklist warning purposes?

a3_nm• 13 years ago

> All of Debian is available in Ubuntu.

Less is more. If everything he needs is available in Debian and he doesn't need the extra stuff provided by Ubuntu, then the default choice should be to use Debian.

illbert• 13 years ago

amen

sigkill• 13 years ago

Exactly. I'm not exactly a power user, but once I heard about Ubuntu being based on Debian, and the whole Linux being modular thing, along with learning how decoupled 'Linux' is from the GUI I quite literally made the switch to Debian cold-turkey. It doesn't have things I don't want, and Debian stable is relatively stable(understatement I know). For other purposes, I boot into Windows.

shrughes• 13 years ago

If you think that way, then you're reasoning about it wrong. Replace the words "doesn't need" with "probably won't need" and then you're asking the right question.

bad_user2• 13 years ago

Last time I used Debian on an older Dell Inspiron, the wifi wasn't working and making it work meant I had to recompile the kernel. I also tried a Wifi stick and the same thing happened. The drivers weren't open-source and so I was out of luck on both Debian and OpenSuse.

Out of frustration I installed Ubuntu and in Ubuntu my Wifi just worked out of the box. And that's when I switched.

Of course, Ubuntu does make mistakes. Nouveau for instance is better for my old laptop's Geforce and yet Ubuntu still asks me to install the proprietary Nvidia drivers, drivers which have brought me nothing but frustration. But regardless, Ubuntu does have the best hardware support.

sink• 13 years ago

I wouldn't call it FUD. Ubuntu's terrible initial state as well as principles are completely valid reasons to drop allegiance to a free operating system. His reasoning and motivation are clear as day and it does not seem to me that he is trying to make any untrue, dubious, or over-reaching claims.

I of course, am sympathetic to his view point. Without having ever heard of this guy, I had the exact same experience while returning to Ubuntu after some time.

I really, really did not like how Ubuntu was initially packaged after a fresh install. Of course, I can make it into anything I want -- no use complaining! So I spent a few hours on this process, molding it into the operating system I wanted it to be. But then I started to think, why wasn't I doing this on Debian, or Arch, or FreeBSD? Since the moment I went to download Ubuntu, the web page was in my face to buy shit. I don't mind paying for software and I believe certain things have intrinsic value. But this approach to selling an operating system started needling a pit of dread into my stomach. If I'm already taking the time to undue everything I hate about the default Ubuntu install, and if I am already building up a healthy loathing at the way the operating system wants to sell my attention and information at every opportunity, how does it offer any value at all? Then the question occurred to me: What awful thing that I am going to have to undue is going to come out of the next release of Ubuntu?

For me Ubuntu has solidly become the wrong choice. I don't mind spending the time to customize my computing environment. But if I need to do that I'm going to choose an OS that aligns better with my principles.

buster2• 13 years ago

Exactly. I am using Ubuntu without Unity (Gnome3) or the Softwarecenter (aptitude) or Ubuntu One (wtf) for a while now.

I must admit i haven't touched Debian as a Desktop Operating System for many years but i appreciate the Desktop Experience that is available with Ubuntu out of the box very very much. All _my_ stuff just works (hello binary blob drivers at Debian?), most stuff nowadays has those private package archives, yet i still don't need to run debian unstable to get relatively recent software. I know i have 6 months until a new version comes along, as opposed to many years of waiting. I admit i frequently reinstall Ubuntu (like every 1 or 2 releases), but that's no hazzle while keeping /home. I still get to test btrfs (changed back to ext4 one release afterwards), i still can screw around with the system a little bit.. nahh.. i don't see me going back to Debian on the Desktop.. Ubuntu may be only a redesign of if, but they make it working nicely on my laptop, the community is huge..

I must admit i wouldn't want to sit down an afternoon with Debian to figure out why my graphics is screwed or my Wifi isn't working, etc. Not anymore, it was fine 10 years ago, ,not 2013..

That said, i'd choose Debian as a server OS any time!

SkyMarshal• 13 years ago

Ditto everything. I also use gnome-do launcher and vim keybindings for everything, making my UI 95% keyboard driven and whatever the window manager is irrevelant. Unity? Gnome3? Mate? Etc. Couldn't care less, all the same to me.

>private package archives

Personal Package Archives [1] actually, but another good point. Between the Debian and Ubuntu repos, Ubuntu PPAs, and the awesome Debian tool Update Alternatives [2], I can install any piece of software, packaged or not, and even multiple versions simultaneously and change the active version with a single command line command [3]. I don't know if the Red Hat or Open Suse ecosystem has something like this, but I'd have a hard time switching to something else without an equivalent.

[1] https://help.launchpad.net/Packaging/PPA

[2] http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/ch-customizing....

[3] https://github.com/byrongibson/scripts/tree/master/install/h...

micahflee5• 13 years ago

When was the last time you tried Debian on your desktop? It's much better than it used to be. The only piece of hardware that didn't work out of the box for me was wifi, but I just had to enable the nonfree repo to install my wifi driver. Other than that, it's a lot like Ubuntu.

jff2• 13 years ago

Ubuntu is, for me, Debian plus an unending parade of annoyances slapped on top. Mistyped a command? Let's wait 5 seconds for the prompt to come back because Ubuntu is going to search the repositories for packages that may match "friefox". Want to use a window manager or login manager besides the defaults? Hope you like pain--the last time I tried that on Ubuntu, only the default window manager was configured to shut off the program that draws the little "loading" dots on the screen as you boot, meaning my new FVWM desktop had glowing dots marching across the center over and over. Oh, sorry, my bad, if I wanted to use a window manager that isn't Unity, I should have downloaded an entirely different fucking ISO because apparently the way Debian has done things for years isn't good enough.

But hey, at least the community is a cesspool of idiots cargo-culting their way to oblivion!

Edit: Ooh, almost forgot: http://i.imgur.com/2sCYFvh.png Ubuntu has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Nursie2• 13 years ago

search the repositories for packages that may match "friefox"

After having used Xubuntu for a while I'm getting really tempted to just ln -s /bin/grep /bin/grerp

epochwolf• 13 years ago

Edit: Ooh, almost forgot: http://i.imgur.com/2sCYFvh.png Ubuntu has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Would you prefer seeing a terminal login prompt after X crashed?

stevepdp• 13 years ago

> Edit: Ooh, almost forgot: http://i.imgur.com/2sCYFvh.png Ubuntu has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. Have you tried turning it off and on again?

You can disable this feature by opening /etc/default/apport and editing enabled=1 to enabled=0. Then stop the service with "sudo service apport stop" or reboot.

You can then selectively enable it again when you notice a reproducible bug or use ubuntu-bug to report bugs against packages.

csense2• 13 years ago

> Let's wait 5 seconds for the prompt to come back because Ubuntu is going to search the repositories for packages that may match "friefox"

I actually like this feature. I'm often following a tutorial, or using a command on a newer install, and suddenly a command's not found -- it's really nice to be able to see how to get past the obstacle immediately without Googling, guessing, or trying to figure out how to make the "apt-cache search" command tell you what you want to know.

Also, for me the loading time isn't this long and is greatly reduced after the first such search. I'm guessing your system is under RAM pressure and your disk is fragmented.

csense2• 13 years ago

> Mistyped a command?

If you mistype commands often, there's an entertaining package which contains an "sl" command.

  sudo apt-get install sl

From the manpage:

  DESCRIPTION
         SL stands for Steam Locomotive.

  BUGS
         It rarely shows contents of current directory.

Zak• 13 years ago

People who like Gnome2 might want to try MATE, Mint's fork of Gnome2. People who liked Ubuntu when it was pretty much just Debian with a simpler installer and better defaults for a desktop might want to try Mint Debian Edition.

hhw• 13 years ago

Agreed, Mint mostly has all the benefits that Ubuntu has to offer over Debian, while removing the drawbacks introduced as of late. I still prefer straight Debian on servers, but out-of-the-box Mint makes for an excellent desktop or HTPC.

technomancy• 13 years ago

> All of Debian is available in Ubuntu

Except two things: higher standards around packaging/stability and the DFSG. These are the things I value most in Debian, especially the way they stick to their guns and refuse to release until it's ready.

gems2• 13 years ago

Again, can't you get these same packages on Ubuntu?

dbaupp• 13 years ago

In addition to the things others have pointed out, Debian offers two things over Ubuntu: you can choose to be very stable with a fairly strong guarantee that software won't crash, or be much closer to the cutting-edge with sooner updates and rolling releases.

juan_juarez• 13 years ago

It's just another "I'm leaving and taking my toys" rant. I don't really get why these things get so much traction here.

jxdxbx• 13 years ago

So you're a Linux user who doesn't think "principle" is important? :)

gejjaxxita2• 13 years 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• 13 years 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_s2• 13 years 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

  > 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.

rlpb4• 13 years 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_s2• 13 years 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'.

micahflee5• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

Where's the article about how you're leaving PHP for statically-generated content? ;)

micahflee5• 13 years ago

Touche!

metaperl• 13 years ago

lol

amalag• 13 years ago

Digitalocean?

micahflee5• 13 years ago

Yup, $5/month. https://www.digitalocean.com/

micahflee5• 13 years 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• 13 years 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.

Nursie2• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

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

bad_user2• 13 years 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• 13 years 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

mergy2• 13 years ago

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

mergy2• 13 years ago

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

_b8r0• 13 years 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.

gems2• 13 years 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• 13 years 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.

fiendsan2• 13 years 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! ^_^

h2s• 13 years 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• 13 years 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.

Why I’m Leaving Ubuntu for Debian

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