Newbie query: Ubuntu vs openSUSE

Liam Proven lproven at gmail.com
Sat Dec 24 18:46:08 UTC 2011


On Dec 24, 2011 5:25 PM, "Robert Holtzman" <holtzm at cox.net> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 03:11:02PM +0000, Liam Proven wrote:
>
>      .......snip of way too much quoting......
> >
> > Ones I would suggest you /avoid/ as a beginner:
> >
> > * Debian
> > * Slackware
> > * Gentoo
> > * Arch
>
> Liam, I think I agree with the poster who said that you seem to be
> living in the past. I have no experience with Slackware, Gentoo, or
> Arch, but have used Debian *and* Ubuntu on and off for several years.
> What was the last time you checked out Debian? At one time you were
> correct in saying that Debian was tough for beginners but, that hasn't
> been true for quite a while. Realizing that this is OT, I'd like to you
> expand (off list if you'd rather) on what you feel it is that makes
> Debian that much harder.
>
> For the record, I'm not necessarily a Debian fanboy, being relatively
> distro agnostic.

Pardon the untrimmed quote & brevity; answering on my phone.

I last tried Debian 6 & before that Debian 5. I think I've tried every
version since 2 on a variety of hardware.

It is much better than it was, but the problem is that techie people forget
how much they know compared to non-techies.

You still must choose server or desktop, partition your disc, pick a
desktop environment, choose supplementary tools, find & instal your own
proprietary drivers, replace Gnash with the actual Flash player, etc.

It's come a long way but it's still not beginner-ready, nor is it trying to
be.

I've also tried 2 other Debian meta-distributions, Crunchbang & Linux Mint
Debian Edition. LMDE is all right; #! I could not even get to instal on
real hardware, using an elderly laptop that is the exact target of this
lightweight distro.

It is easy to underestimate the amount of polishing & improvement Ubuntu
has done.
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