Saturday, February 5, 2011

Why I'm probably switching from Ubuntu, pt 3 (future)

In my last post, I discussed why the direction Ubuntu's taken recently has left me less than satisfied.

The future?

In short, I'm not really sure.

I think I've been using a Debian-based distro for so long that it'll probably be something along those lines. I did use Fedora for a while (6 months-ish) when I came to my present job. Honestly one of the most frustrating things was there seemed to be a major fracture in it's external repositories. Maybe I was just trying to install some weird stuff, but it seemed to me like a lot of what I wanted was in one repository, but some was in another, and the dependency conflicts eventually became too much. At any rate, at the time I was longing to get back to Ubuntu.

As far as Debian-based goes, the three that pop into my mind are:


  • Debian
    Switch from Ubuntu to Debian? Not unheard of, actually:

    Considering my major complaints with Ubuntu right now are stability and the new direction it's taking in terms of features, Debian would be a logical choice. At least from an outside perspective, it seems more balanced than the one-person (Mark Shuttleworth) distro that Ubuntu seems at times.

  • Mint
    I'm still not really sure why Mint exists, but to be honest I just haven't looked into it. The only advantage that I know of is that it's green instead of the ugly brown/purple that Ubuntu has used. A big disadvantage would be that I believe it's based on Ubuntu, so it may inherit many of the issues I have with Ubuntu right now. But I can't knock it til I try it.

  • Elementary
    Again, this one is Ubuntu-based, and so could inherit many of the issues I have with Ubuntu. But this one looks really amazing. I especially love the focus on simplicity. Sometimes when you have software written by geeks (and often for geeks) like GNU/Linux, simplicity gets lost in the quest for gobs of features. Quite often this ends up making me less productive, as I sift through buttons that I'll never use to find the one I want. But less really is more. And Elementary looks very promising.



Who knows what will happen. There's a strong chance I'll be too lazy to switch from Ubuntu, or that I'll try other options and come back. But Ubuntu definitely isn't on the pedestal it once stood. And maybe it's not the end of the world after all.

6 comments:

  1. You could go crunchbang? I think I posted a comment last time (Ill check to see what you said in a minute) you could also check out fedora again. Redhat is very good. The other thing you could try is get away from gnome. I always liked KDE but it wasn't very stable until now perhaps a KDE UI Debian or Ubuntu. You can take a look at what KDE looks and feels like at my personal blog.

    http://freedupthoughts.wordpress.com

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  2. I'll definitely have to check out crunchbang. I doubt I'll go with Fedora again, but you never know. I also doubt I'll switch to KDE. I used it in the past, and it always felt bulky and buggy, but perhaps that was more because I've only used it in Mandriva.

    thanks for the advice!

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  3. you might want to check out

    http://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

    which points to linux mint, the debian based edition...

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  4. hmmm, mint debian edition sounds pretty cool, but if it's less stable than regular mint, which is based on ubuntu, I'm not sure that's too appealing, considering my main complaint with ubuntu right now is stability... but thanks for the heads up

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  5. You might consider Debian Squeeze. It is far more stable than Ubuntu. Debian Linux Mint should actually be more stable.

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  6. I just switched to Debian stable, after first using Ubuntu and then Linux Mint.
    Actually, I switched today. :)
    Linux Mint is a small bit better than Ubuntu IMO, but I just grew tired of it breaking my setup repeatedly.
    So now I am using Debian, and if you know your way around Ubuntu-ish distros, you should be right at home.
    Be your own Shuttleworth. :)
    I chose stable because I don't like fixing my setup when I don't want/need to.
    I can enable backports and build things myself if the Debian repositories doesn't have what I need.
    I know exactly what I want, so it was a natural choice for me to pick the source (Debian) instead of relying on the choices of Canonical.
    Just take the plunge.
    I am not going back. :)

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