
Why I’m Leaving Ubuntu for Debian  - recoiledsnake
https://micahflee.com/2013/01/why-im-leaving-ubuntu-for-debian/
======
rlpb
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...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/02/privacy-controls-minor-ui-tweaks-
land-in-ubuntu-12-04)). 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.

~~~
jff
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?

~~~
epochwolf
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?

~~~
tedunangst
Obviously x didn't crash, since the window appears in x. I get the same thing
every time I start Ubuntu. When I ask for details, it's like "oh, I don't
actually know what crashed, but I think something did."

~~~
lewispollard
I actually had to disable apport because of my relatively new hardware. When
idle the GPU can enter a super low powered state which the Ubuntu driver
interprets as a crash, then the GPU comes back online and... the crash
reporter crashes. Resulting in about 20 'internal error' pop ups until it
gives up.

------
j_s
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.

~~~
rlpb
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
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'.

------
bad_user
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!

------
iuguy
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
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.

------
Nursie
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...

------
Shorel
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.

------
gejjaxxita
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.

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

~~~
micahflee
Touche!

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

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

------
trts
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.

------
zoowar
You've always been Debian.

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

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

------
h2s
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.

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

------
desigooner
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.

------
fiendsan
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! ^_^

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

------
adjin
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

------
reklis
archlinux #ftw

~~~
robertfw
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.

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

