I left Ubuntu clear back in 2008 when I saw very clearly that their
developers (Especially in Canonical.) were starting to care less and
less and less about what their community actually wanted. I saw the
disastrous integration of Pulseaudio and how the developers and various
"authorities" on their forum seemed to shout down or even go out of
their way to discredit or silence critics of that move.
They totally ignored the fact that Pulseaudio, especially back in 2008,
caused more problems than it solved and was a blatant case of a solution
looking for a problem (To this day I have no issues at all whatsoever
with straight up ALSA and still see very little tangible advantage to PA.).
But I didn't hop to Debian, I switched to Arch. At the time it seemed
like a lot of users, if they were leaving Ubuntu, they were jumping ship
to Arch. And it was for good reason, it offered way more choice than
Ubuntu, and the developers generally didn't go out of their way deciding
for you what you want, unlike Canonical in Ubuntu. For a very long time
I used Arch, then Gentoo, and am still a big fan of both, since as far
as choices and flexibility go they are leagues ahead of anything Debian
could pull off without overhauling APT.
I largely left Arch because instead of the typical "developers force
their favorite software on me" situation it was a combination of "too
much RTFM in the community/oodles of arrogance on the part of the
developers." One thing they did I do like, ironically since my criticism
of PA, is the switch to systemd. The reason I drifted away from Gentoo
was a seeming lack of direction and that it was getting to be a lot of
work keeping conflicts down with USE flags. Not to mention for a rolling
release, Gentoo seemed to move at a glacial pace in updating software
(This in contrast to Arch which is pretty quick to getting up to date
with upstream and VERY good at keeping the result from being broken.)
The reason I use Debian now is that I do like APT, and because I got a
lot less time to tinker and play with Arch and Gentoo. My current
circumstances don't allow me the time to do pre/post-upgrade maintenance
the way Arch and Gentoo demand.
I like Debian. My only real beef with it is the DFSG. Debian developers
(And a lot of users.) operate a little too much under the assumption
end-users actually care about things such as source code being available
and I do think this is why Debian is kept from being as popular as it
could be. Great for forking distributions off of, however. While
certainly, as a programmer, I can appreciate having source code for the
software I use, I am way more a follower of the Torvalds philosophy
("Use what works best for you and your hardware." over the Stallman
philosophy (The false notion that software being open source is some
sort of moral issue.). You'll often see me on this mailing list ranting
at someone who invokes "it's closed source, so it's automatically bad."
Debian tends to go out of its way to appease the Free Software
Foundation for zero benefit (Or respect from RMS.) whatsoever.
Perhaps my biggest technical gripe is a side effect of the Debian
philosophy: Good luck ever actually installing Debian over a wireless
network on their official media, as they shortsightedly decided that
"philosophy" is more important than "install Debian on a laptop."
Another gripe is how much they hold back mainstream Debian for their pet
projects that stand very little chance of significant adoption (Debian
kfreebsd: BSD is in a decline, and (Debian Hurd) I see very little point
in Hurd, as the project is virtually dead.). This keeps Debian from
switching to better stuff like systemd (Yes, I know systemd is in the
repos.) that could make better use of the Linux kernel.
Conrad
On 11/08/2013 11:57 AM, Alberto Salvia Novella wrote:
Note: Since I'm not subscribed to this mailing list at the moment,
please send also a copy to my email when replying.
----------
Normally I write very short, like a Haiku
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku>; but I think this letter shall be
the exception. So excuse me 😳
***************
THE HISTORY
***************
My name is Alberto Salvia Novella
<https://launchpad.net/%7Ees20490446e>. Till 2008 I investigated how
to create a Windows based reliable desktop computer system, till I did
it and I realized nearly no one else will be able to do it without
expending great amounts of time and money.
One night I dreamed I had a very old looking but robust operating
system installed on my computer, and eventually realized that what I
should do is to look for something that was like what I saw. Although
at the time I didn't know a thing about any other operating systems
different to Windows or even libre software, I downloaded and tried in
deep about fifty different operating systems from the time intensively
for three years.
Without reading a line of other people opinion, it seemed to me at the
time Ubuntu was by far the best option in overall. But latter it went
very buggy, and I began to pose myself why was that. What seemed more
probable to me is Canonical chose to make radical decisions and,
rowing against tide, selected to do something very different from what
other distributions had done to the moment; in order to discover how
they could make libre software to grow in popularity.
Being between jumping to other distribution (Debian or Mageia) and
giving this mind scope of Canonical a try, I decided five months ago
the best action I could do was to get more involved with the project
and empower it from its roots; and see what will happen and what the
real problems are.
After five months; the latest project coordinator of the "One Hundred
Papercuts <https://launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts>" project, from
Canonical, has asked me to take on the project. So; with the help of
the team; I have redesigned branding and project goals, and have make
a serious commitment to make it shine
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/One%20Hundred%20Papercuts/One%20Hundred%20Papercuts%20will%20make%20Ubuntu%20shine>.
************
THE POINT
************
The point is yet very simple: I suspect Debian has a mindset that
makes it stand out, I can imagine what kind of values these are, and I
want them to become widespread. And now I feel I have the opportunity
to show and convince the Ubuntu community to adapt them, and probable
with it many people around the world.
So I wanted to ask you the following question so it can't be said it's
only my imagination. Summarizing:
Which are the very important reasons why do you prefer Debian over
Ubuntu?
----------
Thank you for your help.
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