Debian Unstable vs. Ubuntu

[Shot (Piotr Szotkowski)]

Hello.

Rami Kayyali:

> I totally agree that Ubuntu is special for the average user, but my
> question is what makes it special for Linux "power" users, and why is
> it better (is it?) than Debian.

Because Ubuntu main and restricted have security support (plus universe
and multiverse seem to have "unofficial" security support as well).
Stable Ubuntu is also really stable (as the packages are tested with
each other); neither sarge nor sid reach this level of stability.

> The 6 months upgrade policy is great, but then again,
> I can do that by constant upgrading with apt.

IMHO, th risk of breakage if far greater with sarge than
with Warty; Hoary seems to be about on par with sid.

> Ubuntu has packages pre-selected for me (as a user), but I personally
> remove most of them and install my own choices. So why wouldn't I use
> Sarge or even Sid?

Keep in mind that sarge, sid and Hoary are constantly changing, while
woody and Warty once issued stay the same - if there's a package foo 1.1
in woody/Warty, and foo 1.3 in sarge/sid/Hoary, when there'a a bug found
sarge/sid/Hoary will get foo 1.4, but woody/Warty will get 1.1 patched
for the bug. *This* is stability - not introducing new versions with new
(possibly broken/incompatible) features.

At the moment, neither sarge nor sid have security support. Sarge will
get security support soon, but then can get outdated in about a year
after going stable, and you'll end up upgrading to etch (then-testing).
Hopefully, testing will have security support by then, but I doubt it
will be as stable as Ubuntu stable.

Sid doesn't have security support and won't have it in foreseeable
future, and while the security holes are usually patched rather quickly,
the Debian Security Team is not maintaining sid and providing the
security is up to invidual package maintainers.

The only downside of using Ubuntu is that there's no official security
for universe and multiverse, but most if not all of the important
packages on my server are in main anyway. Debian doesn't provide sarge
security at the moment at all, but will provide it in the near future.
Hopefully, testing (now - sarge, when sarge ships - etch) will have
security support as well.

To sum it all up: stability-wise, if you're using mostly things from
Ubuntu main, go with Warty. Debian sarge is not nearly as stable, and
Debian woody is too outdated for my uses.

Security-wise, when sarge gets security updates, it will get them for
all of the packets; Ubuntu gets security support only for main and
restricted. If the testing-security infrastructure takes of, etch will
be also secure, though not as stable as Warty now and Hoary in April.

My current setup is Debian sid on a machine that's both server and
workstation plus sid on my laptop; my target setup is Ubuntu Warty
on newly-acquired server and Ubuntu Hoary on both workstation and
laptop. The Warty server will use just ubuntu-base, not the whole
ubuntu-desktop, of course.

Cheers,
-- Shot
-- 
           CHANGES since 0.99 patchlevel 14:
           - too many to count, really. Besides, I've lost my notes.
                                                  -- Linux changelog
====================== http://shot.pl/hovercraft/ === http://shot.pl/1/125/ ===
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20050206/f2cc6181/attachment.sig>