Forget Hardy

[Peter Garrett]

On Thu, 12 Jun 2008 08:54:45 -0500
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Peter Garrett wrote:
> > 
> > I also came to Debian through Knoppix, originally. Knoppix was never
> > intended as a hard-drive install, as Klaus Knopper himself often said.
> > For example, a dist-upgrade from a Knoppix install was pretty much
> > guaranteed to break, and Knoppix used a mix of stable, testing and
> > unstable, which is close to heresy from a Debian viewpoint. :)
> 
> ...and the fact that it had to be in order to work points out the 
> problem with debian and why most of us aren't using it.

This is simply not so. If you know about other Knoppix-ish distros -
several of them were based on "pure" Sid. Morphix was one. Another was
Kanotix. As far as I know, Kanotix is still around. It's also quite
possible to roll your own live CD based on Debian or Ubuntu. I've done
that with both at various times. They both work just fine... and I
assure you that the differences are minimal when you look at the base
systems without the added bells and whistles.

As far as Debian needing to be a mix of stable, testing and unstable in
order to "work" - excuse me while I chuckle and chortle ... ;-)

> > Someone will probably pull me up on this - but as far as I can see,
> > technically the Ubuntu way and the Debian way are practically
> > identical.
> 
> Except when they aren't.

And that would be when, exactly? I was referring to the technical
aspects and particularly the packaging system. Perhaps you can
enlighten me...

> > I think the issue with both "Debian" distros and Gentoo is that both
> > have quirks.
> 
> All systems have quirks.  

Truisms are fun, aren't they?

> The difference is in how many are 
> automatically handled by the installer and administration code and how 
> many waste user/administrator time to get a working system. Ubuntu comes 
> out ahead in this respect, but as a side effect it permits, even 
> encourages, people who don't fully understand it to have systems that 
> mostly work.  

Well, ... yes... and... ?

> And these people will sometimes answer questions on mail 
> lists incorrectly with something that just happened to work for them 
> which is more of a trigger for rambling threads like this than the 
> newbie question that was posted in the first place.

Not really sure what your point is. I don't see how this is peculiar to
Ubuntu at all, if that is the implication. As for rambling threads - I
see them as an interesting symptom to be diagnosed. In other words, I
ask myself and others the question as to what causes them - and I don't
think that's about Ubuntu enabling people to have half-baked ideas
about what "works". I've seen those on a lot of lists.


-- 
Peter Garrett <peter.garrett at optusnet.com.au>
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