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Ubuntu vs Debian

S

Sureshot324

Diamond Member
What are the major differences between Ubuntu and Debian as a desktop OS? I've been using Ubuntu for a few months and have been wondering how different things would be if I switched to Debian. I've heard that Debian is slow to adopt new software, but Ubuntu isn't exactly fast either considering we don't even have firefox 1.5 yet.
 
ubuntu has 6 month cylces. debian is considering reducing theirs to 18 moths (i thing sarge was released 3 years ofdter warty).
debian is more for the techy ppl. ubuntu is a mopre polished debian unstable.

ps. both ubuntu and debian offer unstable (they are still very stable) repos. add them and you'll have all the new software you won't
 
Personally I use Debian, I haven't seen any compelling arguments to switch to Ubuntu. The only real benefit that I've seen is the faster release cycle, but that means that their 'unstable' is a lot more unstable and not recommended for normal use. Debian unstable gets some shakeups when major transitions happen, but usually those are easily avoided with common sense.

Gentoo or Fedora Core 5.
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Gentoo if you like watching compiler output scroll by and FC if you like hunting for 3rd party repos and waiting on yum.
 
Does debian unstable get all the new software as soon as it's released? For example, new versions of firefox, gnome, etc.
 
Does debian unstable get all the new software as soon as it's released? For example, new versions of firefox, gnome, etc.
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Depends on the software, bigger things like Gnome take longer to package and polish. FF is indeed 1.5(1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.3-2). As of right now it looks like most of Gnome 2.14 is in sid, but there are still some 2.12 pieces. I only use bits and pieces of Gnome but they all work fine, I don't know if a full Gnome desktop would have problems or not. I would assume not though otherwise some people would be crying really loudly.
 
I use both. I installed Ubuntu on my laptop (great out of box support) and I put Debian Stable on my desktop and servers (prefer stability to packages).

I prefer Debian for it's ability to be customized really easily. I prefer Ubuntu for out of box functionality. I prefer Gentoo for days I need to catch up on sleep (perl 5.8 takes forever to compile...)
 
if you are enjoying ubuntu I see no reason why you would want to switch to Debian...or necessarily what it has to offer over anything else.

As for FireFox...it isn't a matter of "slowness" as much as it is a matter of what has to be backported. Apparantly there was an insane number of packages to be backported and they weren't sure on how much it was going to break so they decided to hold off and leave it at 1.07 IIRC (not exactly sure where it ended...been using Dapper since Flight 5 and I have the latest 1.5.0.3)
 
I use Fedora Core 5 on my desktop.
Originally posted by: Nothinman
[snip] FC if you like hunting for 3rd party repos and waiting on yum.
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I use the yum configuration from fedorafaq.org and I have not had to add any other repos, and _supposedly_, tests show that the current version of yum is faster than Debian's apt-get.
 
I use the yum configuration from fedorafaq.org and I have not had to add any other repos, and _supposedly_, tests show that the current version of yum is faster than Debian's apt-get.
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Well since I can't look at the yum.conf on that site without dissecting the RPM I can only guess what's inside of it, but I would guess that at least livna is in there which is a 3rd party repo. And I highly doubt that yum is faster than anything since it's done in python and apt is C++.

#time apt-cache search gnome > /dev/null

real 0m0.481s
user 0m0.480s
sys 0m0.000s
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That I ran it with wc -l the first time and it returns ~800 packages out of ~18000. Running it twice also makes sure everything is in cache so disk I/O doesn't affect the results.
 
as a desktop OS, I'd prefer Ubuntu. It's easier and more polished. And as a former Ubuntu user who's now on Mac OSX, I have to say I miss Synaptic/apt-get, installing software is such a pain now since theres no central repository to look at.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
I use the yum configuration from fedorafaq.org and I have not had to add any other repos, and _supposedly_, tests show that the current version of yum is faster than Debian's apt-get.
Click to expand...

Well since I can't look at the yum.conf on that site without dissecting the RPM I can only guess what's inside of it, but I would guess that at least livna is in there which is a 3rd party repo. And I highly doubt that yum is faster than anything since it's done in python and apt is C++.

#time apt-cache search gnome > /dev/null

real 0m0.481s
user 0m0.480s
sys 0m0.000s
Click to expand...

That I ran it with wc -l the first time and it returns ~800 packages out of ~18000. Running it twice also makes sure everything is in cache so disk I/O doesn't affect the results.
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The yum configuration includes a bunch of repositories, including livna. A bunch of them are disabled, but can be easily enabled with --includerepo= in case the standard repos do not contain what you need, which I have not needed yet.

As for the speed, I'm pretty sure yum is not that fast, and it would make sense that apt would be much faster being coded in C++. Yum has gotten much faster though, due to recent versions running more from cache and using xml.
 
As for the speed, I'm pretty sure yum is not that fast, and it would make sense that apt would be much faster being coded in C++. Yum has gotten much faster though, due to recent versions running more from cache and using xml.
Click to expand...

Even when running from the cache before (I assume 'yum -C' is what you're talking about) yum is incredibly slow, so even if it's the default now it doesn't help much. And call me pessimistic, but I don't see how using XML could make anything _faster_. =)
 
I've used package management stuff that was written in python and was fast enough. Yum's problem is that it's just very badly designed. It doesn't do cache'ng unless you specify some extra commands and lots of other oddball things like that. And Apt-get has the advantage of being very mature, you can do some realy crazy stuff with it fairly easily and it's fast. But the good thing about yum sucking is that your only going to have to use it once and a while and since Linux is a multitasking system you can be doing other things as the system installs software or upgrades.

What makes Gentoo wonderfull is it's built-in GCC screensaver. If you color your terminal green you get a neat matrix-y effect during the install time. About six hours into a Gentoo install and I can swear-to-bob see that "lady in the red dress". Pretty neat. 😛

edit:
I prefer Debian personally. I use Debian unstable personally and would use Debian stable for large amounts of Desktops and servers due to it's low mantaince nature. Ubuntu is good for people that want a newer desktop then what Stable provides without having to use Debian's backports (unofficial stuff) and don't want to put a lot of work into mantaining it like Unstable requires.
 
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