Re: "I do consider Ubuntu to be Debian" , Ian Murdock

On Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 11:35:02AM -0700, Michael M. wrote:
On Mon, 2007-03-26 at 15:28 +1200, Chris Bannister wrote:
On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 05:37:00PM -0700, Michael M. wrote:
All that is to say that Ubuntu serves a purpose, and it's a valuable
one, IMO. It's not for everybody; nor is Debian, nor any other distro
in particular. Ubuntu at least provides an experience quite similar to
Debian while doing things that Debian stubbornly refuses to do, like
sticking to a schedule. On that score, I agree 100% with Ian Murdoch --
Debian is missing a big opportunity.

What schedule. There was/is no promised schedule. "Dec 6th 2006" was
never an actual release date.


The schedule that the release team puts together. It contains target
release dates. Debian missed its December target for Etch. It remains
to be seen whether it will make the new target of 2 April 2007.

Call it what you want: schedule, timeline, target, whatever. The point
is that the Debian Project doesn't value it enough to stick to it. I
doubt there's a large software project in existance that hasn't missed
its targets sometimes -- Ubuntu, Fedora, openSuSE all have had release
delays in recent memory, and then there's Windows Vista. But Debian is
fairly unique in being so cavalier about it.


Now this is unfair. You're complaining that the Debian developers
don't release things on time, but think about what the stable branch
is used for; Servers, (some) home computers, and some mission critical
data centers (I am not 100% sure on this, but doesn't NASA use Debian?
I remember reading something about it, or the likes of it)

If Debian worried about sticking to a schedule rather than worrying
about the stability of the product, you'd hear about a few more
missing astronauts and a couple of billion dollars gone from (I'm
going on a limb here) some bank data centers. Obviously this is all
worst case scenario, but it's what Debian is primarily made for.

Most of the PR Debian gets is negative, and that's because no one
truly understands the Debian project; (Note: I'm not a dev, but I'll
use "We" as in "We the Debian people") We don't care about release
dates, we don't care about the newest versions of software, we care
about rock hard stability. Even the testing branch of Debian is known
to be pretty stable, for the most part. And even if you wanted the
things most "Desktop" distros offer, you could apt-pin from unstable.
With enough wits about how Debian works you can get any install of
Debian to feel to the end user exactly like an up to date Ubuntu,
Mandriva, or Fedora install.

Release dates aside, Debian also has the largest repository for
software. And like Gentoo, Debian is (For the most part) a rolling
release distribution, you never really have to upgrade to a new
release. You could stay testing, or unstable, instead of sticking with
"Sarge" or "Etch". Debian is about choice, and it gives you the power
to use your operating system however you want. Whether you want to
install a mission critical server, or beef up your system ala Gentoo
(Using apt-get source) you could do it.

Sorry about the rant, but I have to defend Debian. It has become my
love in the past few months, I only wish I started using Debian
earlier (Damned Windows).


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