Ubuntu vs Debian: this is amazing!
Submitted by admin on Wed, 2006-10-04 21:44
The other day I was playing with fun Google Trends tool and got an idea to check Ubuntu versus Debian popularity. You can see the result on the picture below and I don't know about you, but it simply amazes me how popular Ubuntu is these days. And not only that, but its popularity is growing day by day, while it can be easily seen that Debian is either stagnating or slowly fading out.
Of course, the trend of Google searches might not represent the number of real installations or any other parameter well, but it's still very indicative. I read a funny story on the topic recently, Breaking up with you, your daughter is prettier and easier, except it's not funny anymore. This far, you have probably guessed that I'm a Debian user. For a decade, if I may add.
So, I don't know, I'll probably spend one weekend installing and testing Ubuntu, it seems that it deserves at least that much effort, but knowing myself, I'll probably be back to Debian before Monday. I don't expect Ubuntu to offer me anything really spectacular, besides polished installation and good initial configuration.
On the other hand, if you're new to Linux, it seems that Ubuntu is really a good choice, if not the best!
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A Really Important Comparison?
There is a whole lot of activity revealed by Google that doesn't reflect much of reality. "Postmoderns," the youngest Linux users out there, are likely to get caught up in an obsessive clicking tantrum, searching for the holy grail of Linux distributions which will give them a one-click-install to a compiz desktop, and everything working ootb.
I imagine much of this activity is people who install ubuntu, get frustrated over something, install something else, get frustrated, and realizing how easy ubuntu was, they come back. Invariably they thrash between opensuse and ubuntu.
It has taken me a while (as a new linux user) to understand skills and knowledge, not the distribution, are the most important.
Now a real test, would be to find a way to quantify the amount of real work accomplished by a given system. Uptimes, bandwidth, etc. Stability under a heavy workload. I would venture that perhaps Debian has a lower percentage of newbies, and therefore less of this phenomenon occurs. Seasoned linux users will go to man pages, online docs, tldp, etc., before google. But I could be wrong :-)
>> A Really Important
>> A Really Important Comparison?
>> There is a whole lot of activity revealed by Google that doesn't reflect much of reality. "Postmoderns," the youngest Linux users
>> out there, are likely to get caught up in an obsessive clicking tantrum, searching for the holy grail of Linux distributions which
>> will give them a one-click-install to a compiz desktop, and everything working
>> ...
>> Seasoned linux users will go to man pages, online docs, tldp, etc., before google. But I could be wrong :-)
Agreed, you could be wrong; but I think not.
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First of all, all following references to "Debian" are a shortend form of the TRUE name: "Debian GNU/Linux", this is important
since you should consider exactly where does ALL the software ORIGONATE from. (Hint: Which compiler does it use ?) ...
.
Ubuntu is a "pretty" fork of Debian. The "glitter" attracts the newbie looking for a Windows XP replacement.
Debian can be setup to look as "pretty" as Ubuntu simply by adding some wallpaper and "Themeing the Desktop" (with a CPU hogger).
Ubuntu is not ALWAYS (completely) binary compatable with Debian.
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If you are new to Linux you probably would choose Ubuntu (and as a former Windows user) and Google for help
(to avoid posting a dumb comment and being flamed -- at least people learned that much over the years past).
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The 'Nerds' (not new to Linux) can Google also, but they don't need to put "Debian" in their search query just
as when you speak you don't include your name in each sentance. We are not playing "Simon sez", we are too old
for that foolishness (at least us 'Nerds' are).
.
The "Newest 'Debian'" does have a more "glitzy" GUI setup program, if that is all that was holding you back now you are safe ...
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Why get a "fork distro" when you can have "Real Linux" (unless you want "Real Unix", which differs from "Linux").
Yes I admit it. Linux is a "fork" too, and that dilutes the power of my argument. Are you better off with a fork
of a fork (Ubuntu, or whatever else)?
.
The _reason_ to use "Linux", instead of "Unix" is for all the great FREE support from a HUGE community of users.
The _reason_ to use "Unix", instead of "Linux" is for all the great PAID support from a SMALLER number of "Techs"
who (ought to) provide what you paid for (a "stable" operating system with (PAID) 24/7/365+ support).
The _reason_ to use "a fork of 'True' Linux", instead of "Debian GNU/Linux" is that the particular version you
have chosen will provide a particular feature that "Debian GNU/Linux" does not offer (such as running in 64k of
memory (on a chip in your watch)).
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In short, your "statistics" are SKEWED by the peculiarities of the persons who would use Ubuntu (or other Linuxes),
they tend to be more tearful when they have a problem and keep clicking the [Search] button on Google (with uBuNtU
as one of the search words) whereas the 'Nerds' just go grab a coffee and come back to their computer calm and ready
to work (planning to spend "X" amount of time to be the ONE who actually fixes the problems for everyone else).
.
Sometime later these fixes will be incorporated into the forks and the fockers (SIC) will stop their insessant clicking !
.
Now that 'they' are hit with the FACTs 'the rest of us' await the tearful replies (with excessive amounts of punctuation
characters and much camel-casing).
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My sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=debian
This guy is insane, don't
This guy is insane, don't listen to him :-)
LINUX IS THE BEST
First of ALL .... LINUX IS THE BEST OPERATING SYSTEM! is not important what distro you are using but the fact is! it is a LINUX DISTRO! if u want! u can create many BOOT to test all LINUX DISTRO! as LONG as it is LINUX! it is the BEST!
quite oppositely. (xp is the
quite oppositely. (xp is the best......)
Expanding the comparisons
Take a look at the comparison between debian, ubuntu, suse, redhat. You can see a small timeframe when debian was the most popular, right before ubuntu took off like a rocket.
http://www.google.com/trends?q=debian,+ubuntu,+suse,+redhat
I dont think this chart
I dont think this chart represents everything correctly. It just shows how many times people are searching for the word Ubuntu on the web, it doesnt show how many systems are running Ubuntu. People are curious and Ubuntu is new, so they want to find out what this buzz is all about. If you compare the total running systems though, I think Debian is a winner
what is wrong with SUSE? i'm
what is wrong with SUSE? i'm using openSUSE 10.1 and i'm very happy with it. I tried Ubuntu but i don't like it. Also tried Kubuntu and Fedora Core 5 but didn't liked them either
Why openSUSE?
It would be interesting to hear why do you think openSUSE is so good, and also what you don't like in Ubuntu? It's hard to make conclusions, unless you give us some more detail.
I, for one, would definitely like to hear your reasoning.
Well, I've been using SUSE
Well, I've been using SUSE for years now and I guess I'm used to it. I also like their control center YaST where you can configure your system very easy, it has a very simple but effective way of doing things. The other thing I like about SUSE is that /etc is very nice structured, especially the init.d directory. I also like distro's that install the development tools like header files and compilers and all that stuff by default, and provide multiple window managers by default. The thing I don't like about Ubuntu is the whole idea of doing admin things using sudo, and I can never find my way around in Ubuntu. I've started with linux on Mandrake back in the days but I moved on to SUSE very quickly as I discovered that SUSE was more mature/easy to use than Mandrake. And I never liked GNOME in the first place, it has limited functionality compared to KDE. OK, it may look very stylish but it still lacks some important user friendly tools. Some people may say that KDE is bloated, but I find that I'm much more productive when I use KDE than when I use GNOME.... but again that's just my openion
Moving to Kubuntu
I have been a Debian user for a while now, but I recently started trying Kubuntu in a virtual machine on my work laptop (which runs Windows). I had been using Etch previously, but Kubuntu won me over. It's just easier using it as a desktop because they do some nice customizations and seem to be getting newer apps in the repositories much sooner than Debian these days.
I'll second a previous comment. I'm looking forward to trying out upstart. The boot process has bugged my for a while now.
Chad
http://linuxappfinder.com
USE UBUNTU OR DIE
USE UBUNTU OR DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ubuntu!!!!! >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Debian
i don't think you should
i don't think you should push Ubuntu in front of the other distro's out there. That's the beauty of Linux... its called choice, if you don't like some distro then pick another one. I've heard a lot of people who don't like Ubuntu.
Try Edgy
If you are going to try out Ubuntu, try Edgy ( current development release ) If for nothing else, for upstart. Edgy has some really nice innovations like running the GUI entirely from an underprivileged user using dbus to communicate ( no I don't just mean you are able to log in as an underprivileged user in case anyone doesn't know what I mean ) And upstart is just awesome. I don't know if it is Ubuntu specific but Edgy also has an `apt-get autoremove package` feature that automatically removes any dependencies that were automatically installed with that package and aren't dependencies for anything else ( especially nice for meta-packages ). Ubuntu isn't just Debian with a flashy GUI, there is a lot going on under the hood that people don't tend to talk about.
Anyway, I really like both Debian and Ubuntu and if you are more comfortable with Debian then by all means stick with it :)
Definitely Edgy
Hey Trogdoor, thank you for a nice comment!
Yes, I'll definitely go with Edgy, because I'm currently using bleeding edge Debian, so any other comparison wouldn't be fair.
I've just read an article about upstart in Ubuntu and it really looks like a promising technology. I'm tired of sysvinit, too.
It looks like Ubuntu starts to depart from Debian these days, and you're probably right, it's not just Debian with polished GUI anymore.
Who knows, maybe I'll decide that it's time to change my favorite distribution, after a decade, and switch to Ubuntu. At least I won't need to relearn the packaging tool skills, which is a big plus for me. ;)
untapped potencial
i am glad to say that an avid Linux user, and have successfully converted most of my friends from windows to Linux. i have sunk my teeth into several distro starting from OpenSuse 10.2, fedora, Mandriva, Pclinux all the way to puppy. and by far my favorite is Ubuntu. It is a matter of preference. i personally prefer Ubuntu because it was the only distro that supported my generic webcam and multimedia keyboard. that and the speed and support won me over. however the main problem was the lack of video driver, wlan and beryl support out of the box. While the absence of these components is understandable, it greatly hinders people crossing over from windows to Ubuntu.there lies the potential. If major distros can somehow include the features or make it easy enough for your grand pa to activate it. Linux adopters would surely grow. Now i do want to acknowledge that distro's such as Sabayon linux, PClinux, mephis, mint and others have progressed in this department. But we should see more.
As for my friends, 2 have adopted Opensuse 10.2, 5 adopted PClinux, and the rest stuck with kubuntu. :)
I've try on all distro
I've try on all distro finally I'm back to Debian.
RE:
Like Dharmathi, I've also tried several, if not all Linux distributions. I've ended up on debian cause of some simple reasons.
One of them is the release cycle. I don't want to reformat my drive every six months in order to update to the latest version of whichever distribution I may use and even if i choose not to do so I would have to after a while since updates stop after 6 months of the new distro, or at the ubuntu case if you pick a LTS release after a couple years (If I'm not mistaken). Now, you'll tell me that I can use apt-get dist-upgrade option, or some other depending on the distro. I've done that and it has caused me a lot of trouble in the past so I wouldn't do it.
Generally, I'm a user/admin who wants stability on my system no matter if it's a workstation or a server. I've tried several other distros like Fedora or CentOS but the lack of packages in repositories made me turn them off.
Also, indeed, debian is a bit slow while booting using the initial configuration but it's not such a hard job to customize the services which start on boot.
One more thing I saw on some of the above posts was about eye-candies (correct me if I'm wrong). I don't think that it's so hard even for some newbie into Linux world to see how to enable them. Besides, there's a ton of howtos available on the net, a simple google query like "how to ubuntu beryl" would bring up a very complete guide on how to the whole process.
I'd recommend Debian to anyone who might want a change from windows or even another distro.
Seconded!
Seconded!
I also recommend Debian
I had been trying to find an alternative to Windows for several years now, and at last I found it. I had been trying to surf on the 'Linux wave' for a bit more than a decade now, and it wasn't until I hit Ubuntu that I truly could appreciate how a computer could be put to good use and real work.
Still, I think it is an amazing enterprise to put it together, I believe Debian is much (and I mean MUCH) more stable, and robust for people who do want their computers for work. I find Ubuntu sacrifices a bit of stability for it's super-dupper polished interface and marketing, which I believe is needed, but definetly it doesn't cross my mind twice that once a user learns the basics of a linux distribution, Debian is the way to go. I suggest Debian Testing for the Desktop, which is very competent, not too old in it's packages, and serious about keeping the solidity of it's stable cousin, and Debian stable for server deployments where production websites will reside.