Organizing Linux Information!

22 Comments

1. 
   Charliebrownau
   February 17th, 2009 at 11:28 pm

   Reason’s I use Debian instead of Ubuntu

   - Updating via Local Optical Media instead of Internet
   Debian comes on Multiple DVD’s that I can update local via burnt dvds instead of using Internet Quota and getting shaped.
   Also when I am at an Lan Party with NO Internet I can quicky grab the discs and update if needed without going ” ohh no , no internet Im stuff”

   - I would rather use Plain Debian .deb’s then download programs that only work on Ubuntu as .deb . This way the one .deb file works on both Ubuntu and Plain debian and other distros that are deb based . (I keep a copy of all opensource , gpl and freeware deb/linux files on my file server to share to others that use Linux)

   - Debian changes less – Debians upgrade system seems to be better and more suited for what I need in an operating system , as it doesnt change as frequent as Ubuntu , this way I know its going to work and be stable if I upgrade to the next major release of Debian

   - Recently more ISP’s in Australia are proving free quota/free traffic Debian mirrors instead of Ubuntu mirror servers

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   Kushal Reply:
   February 17th, 2009 at 11:43 pm

   Thanks.Your reasons are added. I only selected reasons which I think are relevant to the interest of this particular post. Nevertheless, people can see all your reasons in the comment section.:) Thank you.

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2. 
   nikhil
   February 25th, 2009 at 2:03 pm

   i love mandriva for its ease of installation and my preference for kde
   kubuntu is no match for mandriva’s kde.
   ubuntu is too bloated and runs rather slowly on my pc.

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   Kushal Reply:
   February 26th, 2009 at 6:29 pm

   Thanks Nikhil, for your comments.
   Your reason has been added:
   http://blogs.koolwal.net/2009/02/17/100-reasons-why-debian-is-preferred-over-ubuntu/

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3. 
   sleepy
   April 9th, 2009 at 11:25 am

   i am a linux newbie. i have ubuntu box and a debian box on some donated hardware. ubuntu works great but i chose debian on the new hardware because of the architecture support. if i am going to invest anytime in learning something new, i want to make sure that i get the most out of it. debian way surpasses ubuntu on the type of architecture that it will run on. that is why i prefer debian. check it out here…

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions#Architecture_support

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   Admin Reply:
   April 9th, 2009 at 11:30 am

   Thank you for your comment. It has now been posted here:
   http://blogs.koolwal.net/2009/02/17/100-reasons-why-debian-is-preferred-over-ubuntu/comment-page-1/#comment-9072

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4. 
   Peter
   April 28th, 2009 at 2:45 pm

   Debian is liberated – free as in freedom – from proprietary junk software

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   Admin Reply:
   April 28th, 2009 at 4:41 pm

   Thank you Peter for your comment!

   Your comment has been added!

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5. 
   Joseph Uncolager
   June 11th, 2009 at 1:31 pm

   Looks like there may be a lack of ideas…personally I use both (for different purposes). Maybe what we need is “Which is best for what and why”?

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   Admin Reply:
   June 12th, 2009 at 10:53 am

   Joseph, I think you are right. I realized that some time back. I think I was over ambitious to for 100 Reasons. May be I should have stick with 10% of 100 = 10 reasons. Sounds like a reasonable ask.

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6. 
   Zahid
   June 18th, 2009 at 12:37 am

   debian strictly adheres to the open source philosophy and free from any kind of trademarks. That is why, I prefer to say, debian is a distro without any trademarks.

   The debian can be used both for desktop, server & netbook. Ubuntu has different distro for different audience(desktop, server, netbook).

   Thanks for initiating this idea.

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   Admin Reply:
   June 18th, 2009 at 9:58 am

   Thanks Zahid!

   Your comment has been added now.

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7. 
   Dan
   July 9th, 2009 at 3:54 pm

   Debian has been built by the community. Ubuntu was heavily funded. Nothing beats a solid committed community. It’s been estimated that if you were to pay to build Debian 4.0 it would cost around 10 billion dollars. That’s quite a community.

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8. 
   dean
   December 30th, 2009 at 9:25 pm

   i’m waiting for my new Eee pc. it has an atom 280, 1g ram, wifi and bluetooth, 250g hd, that other os #7, and i would love debian. now how do i get it! just waiting on amazon and you.
   happy new year

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9. 
   Derek Broughton
   January 25th, 2010 at 7:11 am

   I’d have to disagree about installing via DVD rather than net – that’s as easy to do with Ubuntu as Debian.

   My last 3 or 4 systems ran Ubuntu. The next will be back to Debian. “Debian changes slowly” is a two-edged sword. I left Debian when Sarge took almost forever to release, and Ubuntu came along at the right time, but Ubuntu has a “change-for-change’s sake” mentality, and KDE has been a disaster for almost two years. Also, I’m really tired of the policing on their user lists which, while supposedly intended to keep everything friendly, so as not to scare off newbies, results in a lack of community.

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10. 
    John
    March 12th, 2010 at 12:04 pm

    Debian is much older and therefore more mature; it has more past experiences to learn from. At age six, Ubuntu isn’t mature at all compared to it’s rivals.

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11. 
    Philippe
    April 12th, 2010 at 8:14 am

    first of all wow!! more than one year and only 10 reasons…

    here is my contrib:

    - without debian, ubuntu would not exist.

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12. 
    Ben in Seattle
    April 18th, 2010 at 8:49 am

    * Debian doesn’t have a “business model”.

    * Debian has a constitution and a social contract.

    * Debian is released when it is ready.

    * Whenever there has been a conflict between being popular and following their principles, Debian has always kept to their principles. (See: “Iceweasel” vs “Firefox”).

    * Debian has a deep commitment to ethics and morality, particularly when it comes to Free Software.

    * Debian knows the difference between “Free Software” and “Open Source Software” and intentionally uses the word “Free” to emphasize freedom.

    * Debian actually recognizes that GNU (the OS) is not the same thing as Linux (the kernel) and makes a point of it in the name of their flagship “product”: Debian GNU/Linux.

    * Debian is able to rein in the madness for whiz-bang features (which we all feel) and release a truly STABLE distribution. (An amazing feat!)

    * Debian’s developers tend to be from the old school UNIX hacker community and it shows in the well thought out design.

    * Very few wheels are reinvented, and when invention is necessary, it is thoroughly thought out and done *right* (for example dpkg/apt).

    * Debian works on well-nigh everything (my latest desktop PC, my cell phone, my antique Macintosh, and my video game console).

    * Debian has a command-line centric community. (People who have only used graphical user interfaces may not know it, but the command line is a Very Good Thing.)

    * Debian defaults to a text-mode installer which is fast and just plain *works*. It is not as graphically pretty, but for a hacker it has beauty, for example hitting Alt-F2 to pull up a console during installation.

    * When a Debian advocate says she has “1001 reasons”, chances are, she’s counting in binary. (Unless she’s Scheherazade).

    –Ben

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    Derek Broughton Reply:
    May 3rd, 2010 at 5:42 am

    Ben makes some good points. But some are not good, or even valid.

    What’s wrong with having a business model? I’m sure Medecins Sans Frontieres has a business model. Not having one doesn’t make Debian worse, but neither does it make it better.

    “Debian is released when it is ready.” Precisely. How many remember Sarge? – the number one reason why Ubuntu took off in such a big way! You can have too much of a good thing – and waiting 3 years for Sarge was definitely too much.

    “Very few wheels are reinvented, and when invention is necessary, it is thoroughly thought out and done *right* (for example dpkg/apt).” Wait – isn’t this a Debian vs. Ubuntu page? Which parts of Ubuntu were reinvented?

    And frankly the “command-line centric community” is one of the things that drove me from Debian in the first place. I DO use the CLI, extensively, but I’m a firm believer that a well-designed GUI is better for the average user – and that brands me a heretic in Debian-land.

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    Ben in Seattle Reply:
    May 4th, 2010 at 3:56 am

    Hi Derek!

    Thanks for the feedback, I’m glad to hear I at least made a few good points.

    As a hardcore commandline user, I’m surprised and disappointed to hear that you felt a heretic in “Debian-land” for holding a perfectly reasonable sentiment.¹ GUIs are everywhere for a good reason: they work for the average user, and most Debian folk know that.

    I’d like you to feel welcome in Debian-land again next time you visit, so please allow me to attempt to explain a paradox. Debian folks can agree with you, that a well-designed GUI is better for the average user, and yet still be commandline centric.

    I think the crux is the definition of “well-designed GUI”. Despite how easy it is to use GUIs, it’s very hard to design one well. There are just so many things that could go wrong, or break, or be forgotten all together. That’s why, if you take a genius GUI programmer and a genius CLI programmer, you’ll find that the commandline interface programmer has much more time for making her program more powerful and more robust. GUIs crash not because it’s inherent in them, but because it’s so difficult to design them well.

    Sometimes I just want to get work done and a GUI gets in the way of what I want to express. At those times, I need to be able to drop down to the commandline so I can use a reliable, flexible solution. Too often, I’ve realized that if Debian didn’t exist, the CLI solution wouldn’t have existed either.

    Many GNU/Linux projects, including Ubuntu, seem a bit embarrassed about their commandline roots. They devote their resources to hiding it from newbies. I think that’s a valuable service since the commandline isn’t for everybody.

    We live in a world that too often mistakes the commandline as an archaic relic rather than the fundamental infrastructure it is. One of the wonderful things about Debian is that it recognizes that and doesn’t have to waste time debating the merits of whether there should be a commandline tool for this or that: the answer is, “yes, of course”.

    –Ben

    ¹ Footnote: The word “heretic” makes me think of a crowd of people pointing and squealing at you like in “Attack of the Body Snatchers”. I’d rather use the word “apostate”. Unless you actually are talking about body snatchers, in which case, I apologize, but, unfortunately, they’ve overrun the earth.

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    Ben in Seattle Reply:
    May 4th, 2010 at 4:56 am

    I realized I skipped over your other comments. I don’t want to take up a lot of space, so I’ll just treat them quickly.

    You make an excellent point about Sarge taking years before it was fully baked. Ubuntu was a reasonable reaction, and the Debian folks are folding some of the ideas back into it, like timed code-freezes. Personally, I enjoy contributing to a project that releases when its ready, rather than being on an artificial deadline. It feels too much like “real work” if I’m shipping software that I know is going to make people unhappy.

    About business models. My point is that Debian folks are “amateurs” in the original sense of the word: they work for love, not money. I respect that that may not be a benefit in your book, but it sure is for me. By the way, I think Doctors Without Borders, while mostly incomparable, is similar to Debian in that only someone who misses the point would ask, “But what’s its business model?” On the other hand, many critics have asked the same about Ubuntu and the Ubuntu folks for some reason feel the need to come up with an answer. (Personally, I think they should just laugh at the critics and keep on doing good work, but maybe that’s a luxury that only comes with having a project that’s almost old enough to vote and can already drink in some states.)

    You do have a good point that Ubuntu doesn’t reinvent the wheel too often since it is based on Debian. I probably should retract that point, since it really is Gnome that is my bugaboo, not Ubuntu. (Oooh, I’m a poet and I don’t even know it!) The point I was attempting to make is that Debian’s slow, deliberative process does invention very, very well.

    –Ben

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13. 
    Dennis M. Linton
    August 23rd, 2010 at 4:53 pm

    Ubuntu is great because it allowed me to get up to speed using linux for everyday computing. It is not great because it no longer runs on old hardware, which was one of its original claims to fame, and the Server 10.4 that I installed on my Proliant 3000 has a memory leak that reduces 1.8 Gb RAM to about 200 Kb in less than five days so I do not get to report my server uptime in weeks or months but days. No one seems to know what causes the problem and, seemingly, even fewer have any interest in fixing it.

    On a lark, a few days ago I installed Debian something (sorry, not up to speed on version names but it is current) on an old Dell OptiPlex GX150 (1.1 GHz, 256 Mb RAM, 20 Gb HD) that sits beside my dual boot (Ubuntu 10.4 and that XP thing, which I have to suffer for work sometimes) work computer on a four port KVM switch. I use this antique for web and e-mail when I am stuck on the wrong OS on the work computer. Much to my surprise, the old Dell does okay (writing this on it) with Debian installed along with both LXDE and Gnome desktops. I had given up trying to find something that would work with some intention of getting the job done – WattOS, Linux Mint, XUbuntu and others were all very, very sluggish.

    Now as a result of Ubuntu I understand Debian sufficiently to use it for work and even run a server (file, web, email, ftp, ssh). Also, as a result of Ubuntu, I am looking for something non-Ubuntu. I have a feeling that the 10 or 12 Ubuntu installs I have around here are going to broach extinction within the next few months.

    There you have it, Ubuntu and Debian are both great but at this point in my life, or learning curve if you will, Debian is greater.

    -Dennis

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