Saturday, October 11th, 2008

Swimming upstream

Roughly three weeks ago I decided to take a little swim upstream. I swam for a few hours and found Sid. I played with Sid for a day or two and I had a great time. However, even though Sid had grown on me, I could not help but feel there was something unstable about our new relationship. I did not experience any craziness first-hand, it was more of a gut feeling that things could go screwy at any time. Having just swam from a place where things tend to get somewhat turbulent every six months, I was keen to find something new, yet stable enough to build a future on. The idea of a future with Sid was really beginning to freak me out, so I decided I had probably swum a little too far.

I said a fond farewell to Sid and started floating back downstream. I was not floating for long when I came across Lenny. For a brief moment I thought I must have been caught in an underwater current and been dragged back upstream, Lenny looked and behaved in a near identical manner to Sid, though Lenny lacked the unstable aura. Lenny and I have been getting along really well since. Sure, I would probably still classify our relationship as being in "testing", still, I do not think it will be too long before it can be reclassified as being truly "stable". I am looking forward to it.

Tagged with: debian, fun, ubuntu


13 Responses to “Swimming upstream”

  1. Vincent wrote,

    I'm looking very much forward to it as well, because my webhost will upgrade as soon as it's really stable. Considering how the current stable version has a really retarded PHP version in the repo's, which prevents me from running my own blog software, I'm eagerly anticipating this release.

  2. Snowpine wrote,

    Hi there, I am looking forward to reading about your Lenny experiments! I am curious if you've ever tried LXDE (which I found in the Lenny repositories). It reminds me a bit of Crunchbang.

  3. Philip wrote,

    @Snowpine: Yes, I have tried LXDE. Actually, I should say, I have tried parts of it ;)

  4. TonyJ wrote,

    Questions:

    What does Ubuntu have over Debian, specifically for future Crunchbang releases?

    Comment:

    Since you, Philip, do most of the work setting up Crunchbang the only point I can think of where Ubuntu might have a leg up on Debian would be the amount of packages available in the repositories. Is Ubuntu's repositories really that much better than Debian?

    I believe Mint also recently experimented with Debian, not sure how that went.

  5. Philip wrote,

    @TonyJ: I am not quite sure where you are coming from with your question? Maybe the question should have been, what does Debian have over Ubuntu? Also, I could be wrong, but I think the Debian repositories have more packages. Having said that, package counts are for the most part irrelevant. The main reason that I have switched comes down to release mentality. Basically, I have grown somewhat weary of Ubuntu's 6 month release schedule; it maybe good for some and I mean no disrespect by this, but personally, I think I am better suited to using an OS which is released when it is ready.

  6. TonyJ wrote,

    Actually the question was meant as posed. >.<

    Basically I was asking: Should Crunchbang remain based on Ubuntu or should it move to Debian.

    What exactly does Ubuntu provide that Debian does not, a rephrase.

    Outside of "branding", I don't see any reason not to move Crunchbang as a derivative of Debian.

  7. Philip wrote,

    @TonyJ: Sorry, I think I was misunderstanding as CrunchBang is already Ubuntu based and so your question seemed somewhat backwards. My bad :)

    So, in answer to your question, Ubuntu does not offer any advantages over Debian, at least not for myself. I guess some users find Ubuntu easier to set-up with the restricted drivers/modules/hardware helpers etc?

    Regarding actually moving CrunchBang to Debian, I am not sure it will happen. I have enjoyed playing with creating the distribution, but it really never was intended to be anything other than a personal project. Also, I feel that Debian is a fantastic distribution and I would only soil it by producing another derivative. Maybe my time would be better spent creating some simple metapackages/scripts that will enable anyone to build a nice Debian based Openbox system similar to the current CrunchBang release?

  8. Kevin Mark wrote,

    Hi,
    it was interesting to read your 'impressions' to swimming into a new pond. As someone who had swum in Debian for a long time, you have the basics right. Sid aka unstable is like smimming in an active stream, new bug appearing and equally new bugfixes too. So if you have an issue, wait a few days and a fix will come. It requires a lot of experience to survive these flowing waters, but if you subscribe to debian-user, those folks will provide many pointers to keep you afloat. Next is the testing pool which gets its packages from unstable but only about every 10 days, so its waters are slower and problems/fixes less speedy but contains more stable software going into the stable release. Then there is stable which is released about every 18 months. Each stream has its advantages and such. But Ubuntu's cycle runs 6 months, which debian thinks is too fast. But is fine for desktop users who like to keep their laptop shiny.
    http://mysite.verizon.net/kevin.mark/newdebian2.png has a complex diagram about debian's processes if you want to be really confused ;-)

  9. johnraff wrote,

    On year-old Ubuntu Gutsy a look at "cat /etc/debian-version" comes back with "lenny/sid", so we've already got a foot in those dangerous waters…

  10. Blue Knight wrote,

    About Debian I should say that the good branch is Testing but NOT Sid. Stable is good and solid but it became quickly enough "old" although of course it remains perfectly usable and very solid.

    @ Kevin Mark

    "But Ubuntu's cycle runs 6 months, which debian thinks is too fast. But is fine for desktop users who like to keep their laptop shiny."

    NO no no! The 6-months cycle is… stupid! "Twice a year, you're served with new bugs, while gazillions of old bugs remain unexamined… because they have to repackage everything once again, with every package having a newer version."

    "which debian thinks is too fast"

    They are right!

    "There is a quality problem in distros as a whole. Only a very few are consistently reliable: Debian, Slackware (actually I can't think of any others which I trust any more) (…) When you use something like Debian or Slackware you can be nicely unaware of most of the crap out there and you get quite a surprise when you stray, it's a little like browsing with AdBlock Plus in Firefox and then trying IE6 on Windows 2000 :-)"

    @ TonyJ

    "Is Ubuntu's repositories really that much better than Debian?"

    Not at all! It's the contrary! And with Ubuntu sometimes you had to get some packages from Debian Lenny and Sid because the Ubuntu versions are either broken or don't exist…. And very poor management of packages' dependencies i.e. too much needless dependency, too many metapackages, too many rough edges once you move away from gnome. In Ubuntuland there is some lack of quality, basically the Debian stuff is fine, the Ubuntu "enhancements" are a very mixed bag.

    "I don't see any reason not to move Crunchbang as a derivative of Debian."

    There is a reason!

    @ Philip

    "The main reason that I have switched comes down to release mentality. Basically, I have grown somewhat weary of Ubuntu's 6 month release schedule (…) personally, I think I am better suited to using an OS which is released when it is ready."

    Philip, you are right… ;-)

  11. EmaRsk wrote,

    @ Blue Knight

    You are trying to impose what I hope you realize are your subjective opinions, with which other can agree or not.

    Ubuntu tries hard to find the best compromise between stability and up-to-date-ness, and I think it does a great work. I have used both Debian and Ubuntu for years. My opinion is that both Sid and "testing" are just too unstable: yes, they work very well, until something goes wrong… And due to their very nature, it eventually will, because they are just not intended for the everyday use: when "testing" is ready for that, it becomes the new "stable". That's what Debian focus on. Debian "stable" is what you expect from it: stable. As a rock. But of course there is a trade-off: you have to sacrifice up-to-date-ness. If you can live with old software, then Debian stable is an excellent distro. When I used Debian "stable" in parallel with Ubuntu, I got very frustrated when I had to use firefox-2 instead of the new shiny firefox-3, which I like far more, or an old version of lyx, and so on, so I decided that Ubuntu better suits my needs. Besides, Ubuntu offers also "Long Term Support" releases for those who prefer to upgrade every two years or so, instead of every six months, but I have no experience with that, so I can't make a comparison with Debian.

  12. Blue Knight wrote,

    @ EmaRsk

    "You are trying to impose what I hope you realize are your subjective opinions, with which other can agree or not."

    But I don't want to impose anything! I just give my opinion…

    I agree with you about Stable and Sid but not about Testing. Testing is a good base for a desktop user, but ok maybe not for a newbie, or a distro, Parsix is a good example. And for more stability it's possible to follow its model: "Ramon r1 introduced the continent apt repository along with the official supported Parsix repository. The Continent repository consists of the whole Debian testing archive minus the official Parsix repository packages. Note that the continent repository for Parsix Viola is frozen now and will not receive updates from Debian except critical fixes. This is a new release policy to make Parsix more stable like approach. The Continent repository will be continued to be updated for the next Parsix release code name 'Boss Skua' and will be frozen before the final release of it, and so on." (quote from the Parsix site)

    "Ubuntu tries hard to find the best compromise between stability and up-to-date-ness, and I think it does a great work."

    Maybe but we would have many things to say about the Ubuntu quality and 8.04 is… hmm bad.

    "Ubuntu offers also "Long Term Support" releases"

    Yes, good. But for some releases. Releasing twice a year is SUICIDAL and for me definitely a bad development model!

    Even Windows don't make that! "there are hundreds of millions of Windows XP installations worldwide who still receive free security patches, 7 years later(!) (…) Gee, what an inefficient business model!", right? But if you think everyone should reinstall new bugs twice a year…

  13. euthyphro wrote,

    If you want to have a "safer" feeling experience with Sid, try Sidux, and use smxi to upgrade. Sidux is excellent.

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