too much bloat

[Che]

Quietly lurking here reading this thread and distro plus / minus aside
an important point that seems to be going by the wayside, is that Ubuntu
is one of the easiest distros to migrate from Windows to.

Back when I started using Linux (HP-Ux-->Coherent-->Slackware1.x) in the
early 1990's we had to compile kernels from scratch and after 15 or 18
hours waiting for the compile to finish we would often have something
unstable that we would have to trash and start all over again.

Finally, 13 or 14 years later we have a distro that I can recommend to
just about any Newb because it damned well works right out of the box
(except for wireless but that affects most distros).

And THAT is the main reason people will drop the Micro-schlock OS in
favour of Linux.

Ever since I started I have had to grit my teeth and listen to 'the real
geeks' talking down to anyone who wants something more than a command
line interface, and it is that attitude that has kept Linux as a niche
OS for FAR too long.

Me, I dream of the day when Windows runs less than 10% of systems out
there and schoolkids cut their teeth on OO and GIMP rather than
MSOffice. And yup there are some bloated programs out there in the Linux
world, only sometimes you might want to remember that the bloat is there
to satisfy feature requests from end users!

Cheers,
Mark

On Sat, 2008-01-12 at 21:51 -0500, Daniel Robitaille wrote:
> On Jan 12, 2008 8:53 PM, Andrey Vul <andrey.vul at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Jan 12, 2008 8:45 PM, Daniel Robitaille <robitaille at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > If you don't want Ubuntu, my personal advice is Debian since I know
> > > JFS works in it.   But which distro to use is a very personal
> > > decision, depending on what you do with it, which apps you run, how
> > > experienced you are, and finally what the people you ask for help
> > > around you use.  In my case, the end result is either Ubuntu or
> > > Debian.
> > >
> > Desktop-wise, testing or unstable?
> 
> I personally use Ubuntu for desktop at home (it looks nicer), and
> Debian Stable for servers at work; partly because I like its stability
> and conservative approach to upgrades in a server/production
> environment, and partly because I work with people who also run Debian
> on their servers so it was easier that way.
> 
> The problem with Debian unstable for desktop is that it is unstable;
> you will get a fair share of updates in a week, and you may never know
> when it will break on you. Exact same thing if you use Ubuntu Hardy.
> 
> And I'm not sure what is the policy of security updates in Debian
> nowadays for testing/unstable; that may be an issue for some..
> 
> Anyway we are quickly becoming OT since this list is not a good forum
> to discuss the merits of the various versions of Debian.  I'm sure one
> of the lists hosted at debian.org is more appropriate for these
> questions, and is full of knowledgeable users about Debian.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Daniel Robitaille
>