Ubuntu is under attack (longish)

[Anders Karlsson]

On 12/19/05, Mike Bird <mgb-ubuntu at yosemite.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-12-18 at 20:08, Eric Dunbar wrote:
> > Ubuntu has shown that less is more.
> >
[snip]
>
> Please Eric, check your facts.  One of our reasons for switching
> from Fedora to Ubuntu was because Ubuntu has more, not less:

The phrase "less is more" should not be interpreted literally... If
you do, you change the meaning of it and attribute something to Eric
which he did not say.

[snip impressive package counts]

> Those are the latest figures from our mirror.  Others may
> disagree but not by much.
>
> Now Debian/Ubuntu packages are finer-grained, particularly for
> libraries, but there's still overwhelmingly more included in
> Ubuntu.
>
> Another key reason why we switched was because Fedora abandoned
> LILO while Ubuntu allowed us to install a sensible starting
> configuration on the first pass.  Little did we suspect that
> Ubuntu would be downgraded in Breezy to discard system emails!

Okay, we get it. You miss Postfix. What do you think I should say then
that *regularly* use the netboot installer? On my install media of
choice I have hardly anything, no desktop env, no MTA, no MUA... Do
you think I should kick up a stink about missing packages as well? If
you are missing packages, and they can not be found in the repo's,
then you would have a point. As it stands, I think you do not. FWIW, I
*rely* on postfix, I installed Breezy from scratch, I run LogWatch,
apcupsd, smartmond and clamav - and I am perfectly happy with Ubuntu!

If you *really* want more un the install media, pour effort into a DVD
ISO project. You can fit 8 CD's worth of stuff on there. Not only
could you get Postfix back, but you could have qmail, sendmail and
exim as well, and the whole of Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Enlightenment DR16
_and_ DR17 (alpha, beta or whatever) and more.
You could probably sheohorn in most if not all of the universe repo on
the DVD. If you make the ISO for a dual layer writer, you have 9GB to
play with.

> I *confidently* predict that if Ubuntu follows Fedora's dumbing
> down strategy that Ubuntu's ratings will follow Fedora's too.

Equally confident, I predict that if Ubuntu is still being backed by
the people working on it today (who makes an exellent distribution
b.t.w.) Ubuntu will still be around in 5-10 years time, and still be
a, if not 'the', leader.

--
Anders Karlsson <trudheim at gmail.com>