POLL ubuntu or Debian base or repositories

[frank392]

Hi , just a little poll to know what do you think, linux mint should be base on Ubuntu or Debian, I know that the best would be on LinuxMint but for now what do you think.

My vote is for Debian


Y had to ad the word repositories, some people get confused

[nelamvr6]

Well, Ubuntu is based on Debian, Mint is based on Ubuntu.

It's already so, Mint and Ubuntu are based on Debian.

And where is your poll?

[frank392]

Hi nelamvr6,
that's is correct, then why we do not use debian repositories and if that is correct why MEPIS is moving back to debian ?

[scorp123]

POLL ubuntu or Debian base or repositories

That question makes little sense. What you mean by "repositories"?? All three (Debian, Ubuntu and Mint) have their proper repositories, so I don't get the sense of your question.

then why we do not use debian repositories

Debian uses a different development cycle, and they are far more conservative about what comes into their repos and what not, they use different naming conventions (e.g. package names), different versions and version designations (e.g. "package xyz version 1.2.3-ubuntu4" vs. package xyz "version 1.2.3b2-debian4-pre11" ...), different library versions, and there are numerous other differences.

and if that is correct why MEPIS is moving back to debian ?

Because MEPIS people are idiots and they based their last release on the Long Term Support version of Ubuntu. They did not understand that the focus of a Long Term Support version is on stabilty and not on providing the newest packages. So when they realised that they can't have all the new goodies for their version (as they were based on Ubuntu LTS) they moved back to Debian instead of basing their new distro on e.g. the newer Ubuntu releases.

All this info is floating around the net (e.g. http://www.linuxtoday.com), please make an effort to inform yourself before confusing me by posting strange questions (just kidding here in case nobody noticed .... )

[frank392]

Hi Master scorp,
please explain me why my debian system never crashed and the one with ubuntu i had to fix something every update?. one more question what distro do you use on regular basis?
thank you

[scorp123]

please explain me why my debian system never crashed

As I said above .... Debian people are far more conservative and cautious about what they allow to get into their repos. So with Debian's e.g. "stable" branch you don't always get the newest packages but then again the distro is super-stable and really really hard if not impossible to crash. That's why Debian is amongst the favourite distros of us server admins, it's really hard to crash and the conservative package selection will make sure there isn't anything 'funny' or 'strange' going on. And having tons of stuff available via "apt" is just so sweet (no more running to the server room with a bunch of CD's ....)

BTW, where I work you can have two OS's as "corporate desktop": Windows 2000 ... or a Debian "Sarge" based desktop Most of us admin people (and there are many here!) choose Debian.

and the one with ubuntu i had to fix something every update?.

I don't have this with my Ubuntu installations. And I am using Ubuntu on various machines. On some of our servers here we are running Ubuntu Server. E.g. the machine described in the thread here is an Ubuntu installation:
http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=21168#21168

what distro do you use on regular basis?

On a daily basis?
- SUN Solaris 9 + 10
- Novell/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 + 10
- Novell/SUSE Linux Professional 9 + 10
- Novell OpenSUSE 10.2
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 + 5
- Debian "Sarge" + "Etch"
- Ubuntu "Edgy" + "Feisty", both desktop and server versions

And some of the 300+ machines under my team's control are rumoured to have Gentoo and other stuff on them. Must be someone's experimental machines (which would be OK), all the productive ones have one of the OS's listed above.

Which one I favour? They all have their good and bad sides. Right now --in this very moment-- I am on a laptop with a heavily modified Ubuntu 7.04 .... one probably shouldn't call it "Ubuntu" anymore

And somewhere I have a laptop with Linux Mint 2.0 "Barbara" which my wife uses here and there. It works tip top so I never bothered touching or upgrading it

[frank392]

ok, so

Because MEPIS people are idiots and they based their last release on the Long Term Support version of Ubuntu. They did not understand that the focus of a Long Term Support version is on stabilty and not on providing the newest packages. So when they realised that they can't have all the new goodies for their version (as they were based on Ubuntu LTS) they moved back to Debian instead of basing their new distro on e.g. the newer Ubuntu releases.

Debian people are far more conservative and cautious about what they allow to get into their repos. So with Debian's e.g. "stable" branch you don't always get the newest packages

Do you get the goodies with Debian or you don't? or Mepis is moving to the "unstable" branch of Debian.

and ok I was exagerating whe I sayd that my sistem crashes every update but some softaware tha I have installed stops working or gives me errors maybe there should be categories for the updates some thing like High priority or security and Optional or software updates

On a daily basis?
- SUN Solaris 9 + 10
- Novell/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 + 10
- Novell/SUSE Linux Professional 9 + 10
- Novell OpenSUSE 10.2
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 + 5
- Debian "Sarge" + "Etch"
- Ubuntu "Edgy" + "Feisty", both desktop and server versions

And some of the 300+ machines under my team's control are rumoured to have Gentoo and other stuff on them. Must be someone's experimental machines (which would be OK), all the productive ones have one of the OS's listed above.

that is very impressive congratulations !

and sorry to bother you with my stupid questions.

[scorp123]

Do you get the goodies with Debian or you don't? or Mepis is moving to the "unstable" branch of Debian.

Debian "testing", "unstable" and "experimental" are far more relaxed about what goes into their repos. So yes, you'd get all the new goodies there. There are many well-known distros which are based on one of the Debian non-"stable" branches, e.g. Knoppix is based on "testing" if I remember correctly, and it can be 'upgraded' (e.g. when you install it to your harddisk) to "unstable".

and ok I was exagerating whe I sayd that my sistem crashes every update

I know what you mean though. I had similar troubles on OpenSUSE 10.2 ... e.g. Nvidia stuff would stop to work sometimes after a kernel update, things like that. I haven't seen this yet on Ubuntu though. Not yet. Maybe I was just lucky so far? ....

On a daily basis?
- SUN Solaris 9 + 10
- Novell/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 + 10
- Novell/SUSE Linux Professional 9 + 10
- Novell OpenSUSE 10.2
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 + 5
- Debian "Sarge" + "Etch"
- Ubuntu "Edgy" + "Feisty", both desktop and server versions

And some of the 300+ machines under my team's control are rumoured to have Gentoo and other stuff on them. Must be someone's experimental machines (which would be OK), all the productive ones have one of the OS's listed above.

that is very impressive congratulations !

It can be a pain sometimes I'd prefer if we had one distro (or maybe 2-3 at max.) on all the machines ... Having so many different distros to manage makes matters complicated sometimes. My favoured solution would be to put Debian 4.0 "Etch" or Ubuntu Server 7.04 "Feisty" on all those machines (because of "apt"!) but unfortunately I am not the one who makes those decisions here. This stuff has grown over the years and various groups here push for various things, and each group has their favourite distro. The Oracle database guys for example push for Red Hat and SUSE, citing the fact that Oracle is only officially certified for those distros (although it can be made to run on any other distro too ... but it would be complicated to get support from Oracle in such a case). And then we have Java programmers and their pet applications they have to look after, then we have guys writing web frontends and they again prefer 'something else' just to be different from the rest ... Trust me, this is not so much fun as I would love it to be Sometimes this is a real pain

and sorry to bother you with my stupid questions.

I don't think that these questions were 'stupid'. Sorry to disappoint you

[NiksaVel]

I know what you mean though. I had similar troubles on OpenSUSE 10.2 ... e.g. Nvidia stuff would stop to work sometimes after a kernel update, things like that. I haven't seen this yet on Ubuntu though. Not yet. Maybe I was just lucky so far? .... Wink

lol... I install the new KDE Community edition... get the nvidia graphics online... than do a full update of everything... reboot to get the new updates working... and am greeted with a CLI... reinstalling the nvidia stuff fixes the problem...

[scorp123]

reboot to get the new updates working... and am greeted with a CLI... reinstalling the nvidia stuff fixes the problem...

You see, that's precisely the problem. Chances are that a beginner won't know how to fix this. Heck, even I used to be confused like hell, tried messing around with xorg.conf and other stuff. Why would I reinstall the Nvidia driver when it was perfectly working a few seconds ago.... ?

The problem with those drivers is --and many people don't really realise this-- that it hooks into the kernel. You update the kernel -- poooof! Nvidia driver is gone and you need to install it again. Once you know this stuff it's easy ... but well. It's quite confusing if you don't know it and if you can't get to Google to look this stuff up ...

[kenetics]

And some of the 300+ machines under my team's control are rumoured to have Gentoo and other stuff on them.

I thought you went with a small company.

[scorp123]

I thought you went with a small company.

Exactly. One of our methods of income is to "lease" people like me to bigger companies

So the customer's team I work for at the moment has like 300+ machines to look after. Ouch.

They leased me until end of December for now. On one hand I wouldn't mind to get away from there again .... on the other hand it's paying off for me (and my current employer). I kind of have mixed feelings about this. I both enjoy it but also hate it a little

And I have all the freedoms of working for a small company, and yet I really get to work in really big (customer) environments. Kind of a 'best of both worlds'.