Re: Which OS? Was "I do consider Ubuntu to be Debian" , Ian Murdock

On Sat, 2007-03-31 at 09:51 -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:
On Tue, Mar 27, 2007 at 05:41:45AM -0700, Michael M. wrote:

What has made Debian a great fit for me over the past months is its
beefed up efforts to make testing a more viable option for users (for
example, by providing security updates for testing). I started using
Etch some months ago, perhaps close to a year ago, pulling in just a few
packages from unstable, and it has been a great fit for me. Until the
past few months, when it has increasingly come to seem stale to me.
It's only natural, then, for me to question whether *I* really fit in
with your definition of "We the Debian people."


Why don't we reframe this as: What is the best OS/Distro for Michael?

Perhaps you have some conflicting needs that requires a non-standard
answer? I _think_ that what I hear that you want is:

More recent software than what is in stable or testing (when its
frozen).

Less dynamic than Sid

That pretty much sums it up, the important qualification being testing
*when it's frozen.* Prior to the freeze, and for at least a while after
it began, I was happy with testing. That's the only reason I am
frustrated with Debian's reluctance/refusal to commit to a schedule. If
I knew, for example, that for up to six months out of every two years,
testing will be frozen, I could live with that. If that were the case,
testing would be the optimal distro for me more than 75% of the time,
which would be good enough. But as past and recent history (Dunc-Tank
tanking, etc.) has indicated, Debian has no inclination to do that, and
many Debian users appreciate its reluctance to do so, for reasons I can
understand. I just don't happen to be one of them.

What about:

Debian stable or testing to run your hardware with a *buntu in a
chroot? Gives you a base OS that won't crash but more recent
software.

Yikes, that sounds complicated!

Is Linux for you? What about one of the BSDs? I've been looking at
OpenBSD; they release every 6 months (their Release is like Debian's
Stable), with security update (source patches) as necessary. Following
every security update even if it doesn't apply to you, you end up
running their Stable. Their Current is like Debian's Sid.

I have tried FreeBSD and quite liked it. I didn't keep it around
because, at the time, FreeBSD slices weren't accessible from Linux OSes,
which made bouncing between Linux and FreeBSD problematic. However,
someone on this list pointed out a month or two ago that the situation
has changed. Multiple file system types make me a little nervous -- I
was happy to leave Windows behind once and for all in part because it
freed me from the NTFS/ext3 divide -- and switching to any *BSD would
bring back that issue, but it would be worth it if I found a *BSD to be
a better option for me because I could eventually leave Linux behind
like I did Windows. OTOH, in terms of alternative OSes (alternative to
the dominant OS today), Linux seems to have more momentum behind it, and
a wider range of hardware support. It would be kind of ironic to ditch
Linux just as a company like Dell is preparing to sell computers
preloaded with Linux. All my Windows & Mac using friends already think
I'm a masochist for using Linux (my friends are non-techie liberal arts
types, as am I) -- it would only confirm their opinion if I dropped
Linux just as it's making mainstream headway!

Anyway, I never looked closely at the advantages (or lack thereof) of
one *BSD over another. FreeBSD seemed to me to be the most user
friendly, and it's the one that the desktop-oriented projects, like
DesktopBSD, PC-BSD, and FreeSBIE, are based off. That was just an
impression I had at the time, I would certainly look into the others if
I decide to try that route.

They can release every 6 months because they only focus on the main OS.
Third-party stuff (upstream) is in packages (binary) and ports (source
tarballs pre-tweaked to compile properly on a given release level).
Using the ports and packages system is supposed to be similar to
using aptitude from the command line. It brings in whatever
dependancies there are, compiles anything required, and installs it.
It also will uninstall.

It sounds to me like this may be a viable option for you:

Stable, reliable, OS

Upgraded every 6 months

Fairly recent third-party software.

So tell us what your ideal OS would be and do. There's enough cross-OS
experience on this list to give good suggestions.

I'm not marking this thread as OT since a discussion on why Debian may
not be working for someone, and what a user's needs are, is important
for Debian folks. So lets _not_ have a flame fest. Lets help a debian
user with a fundamental problem: his OS isn't doing what he needs it to
do.

The "perfect" OS for me would be Debian testing in a non-frozen
state ... it has everything: the power of apt (with a truly awesome
management tool in aptitude, which I love);
recent-if-not-necessarily-bleeding-edge software versions, a huge
software repository; plenty stable, with very infrequent breakage
anywhere; manageable, rolling updates (I like, in general, to update
about once-a-week) with no real need for upgrading; flexibility -- no
preferred windowing environment; no binary blobs installed by default,
but still available if you need them (I do use Flash, lame, w32codecs,
Sun's Java, and non-free unrar; I don't use nVidia's proprietary driver,
nor MS fonts, Adobe Acrobat, nor any other non-free software I can think
of). I like Gnome and would be reluctant to abandon it, but I could
probably survive with XFCE or even just Openbox; I don't care for KDE.

Of those I've tried, my favorite non-Debian-based distro is Arch Linux,
the caveat being that Arch is very bleeding edge and more prone to
breakage here & there than Debian testing. It's more like Sid, in that
respect. Arch was inspired by CRUX, which is probably too advanced and
D-I-Y for me, and CRUX was developed along *BSD lines, like Gentoo. In
many ways, a *BSD might really be my best bet. Is there anything else
that compares favorably to Debian testing out there?


--
Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions
of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to
dream." --S. Jackson


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