Comments on: Ubuntu vs. Debian, reprise

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Wow, well said. The results of maintaining this type of compatability would be staggering in its impact. I also agree this should be used as a “wakeup call” to Debian proper. Maybe fewer flamewars and more working together would help as well? It certainly wouldn’t hurt.

By: Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I was surprised to see simultaneously anti-Debian and pro-Ubuntu sentiment in the comments on your earlier blog entry. I would have thought that everyone realized that the only reason that Ubuntu can offer such a fine finished product as Hoary Hedgehog is that it is based on such a fine unfinished product as Sarge.

The anger is misplaced. First of all it should be remembered that producing a good operating system is difficult. Second, Debian can only do so much of the necessary work. It lacks the organisational structure that would enable to satisfy arbitrary demands. Getting angry at Debian for not releasing on a tight schedule is getting angry at volunteers for not making even greater personal sacrifices.

This is why Ubuntu is a godsend for Debian. Ubuntu can do things that Debian cannot. But of course, Ubuntu could not maintain a whole operating system on its own.

I am not very concerned about Ubuntu forking too far off Debian. Ubuntu generally makes changes that would be appropriate for the Debian package too. Ubuntu patches are available for backporting to Debian. If Ubuntu packages diverge too much then it’s more likely to be due to Debian not keeping up than it is to be due to Ubuntu making secterian modifications.

There is the risk of Debian not keeping up. We can be sure that _some_ packages will fall far behind. For this reason Ubuntu should not be expected to maintain backward compatibility with Debian. A better idea might be for the major Debian redistributions to coordinate their work with one another.

By: Aigarius

Aigarius — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I would really like to see timeframes for Debian releases, but I would like to see them big, like a release once in two years sounds a reasonable goal for a really stable distro that Debian has been since the beginning of time :)

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Well said. I am particularly pleased to see your comments wrt a predictable release cycle. “When it’s ready” just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Regarding ubuntu. I’ve read many times, “if ubuntu can take debian and make a stable release….” But, are we talking about the same definition of stable? Ubuntu drops circa 9 architectures. If debian did the same (thought experiment only!), would it not be release-worthy? This is a common opinion, and yet I’ve heard that the majority of release blockers are not esoteric architecture problems.

Even without the disparity in supported architectures, is ubuntu’s definition of stable as concrete as debian’s?

By: Martin Langhoff

Martin Langhoff — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Is there a real issue, or much ado about nothing?

Can you point out exactly what issues with package installation are you finding? I asked this question in your last story, and I ask again, because I run several hybrid systems with a mix of Hoary and Sarge packages and I am _not_ seeing any problem. They versioning is sane, and gives precendence to Debian packages.

Without knowing what the problems are, it is really hard to understand your opinion piece. Perhaps it is something as irrevevant as a bug in an Ubuntu package or on a third party package.

Puzzled,

martin