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Posted: 2006-11-02 11:23
by an.echte.trilingue
Lavene wrote: I have actually all three brances in my sources pinned with Etch as highest, Sid as number two and Sarge as three.
If you have a minute, would you mind letting me know how you did that? I knew that you could pin packages, but not entire repositories...

Posted: 2006-11-02 12:22
by Lavene
Here is my /etc/apt/sources.list:

Code: Select all

# SARGE
deb ftp://ftp.no.debian.org/debian/ sarge main contrib non-free
# deb-src ftp://ftp.no.debian.org/debian/ sarge main contrib non-free

# ETCH
deb ftp://ftp.no.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free
# deb-src ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free

# UNSTABLE
deb ftp://ftp.no.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
deb-src ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

# SECURITY
deb http://security.debian.org etch/updates main contrib non-free

# MARILLAT NON-FREE
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ etch main
And my /etc/apt/preferences:

Code: Select all

Explanation: see http://www.argon.org/~roderick/apt-pinning.html
Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=testing
Pin-Priority: 900

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 800

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=stable
Pin-Priority: 500

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian
Pin-Priority: -10

Package: *
Pin: origin www.debian-multimedia.org
Pin-Priority: 600
Tina

Posted: 2006-11-02 13:57
by simen
an.echte.trilingue wrote:[Ubuntu] isn't easier to install, that's my point.
While I agree that Debian isn't hard to install, I think that in a certain sense, Ubuntu is easier to configure, at least for someone who's not so comfortable with Linux yet. I do know that Ubuntu's hardware autodetect has a good reputation, and with good reason. For instance: Ubuntu autodetects and configures my wireless card, including my esoeric radio kill switch (impressive) and all the proprietary firmware. For me, this makes Ubuntu a perfect live CD, if nothing else. Debian of course doesn't install any proprietary drivers, and neither do I want it to! That's the single biggest reason I started using Debian in the first place:

Debian: freedom first and foremost! Ubuntu: (a certain kind of) usability first.

Just to elaborate: Debian's installer doesn't see my kill switch coming, and it kind of b0rks my LCD, so I'll get flickering images during boot time. I think Ubuntu's whole point is catering to people who couldn't care less about xorg.conf; people who aren't interested in computers, but feel compelled to use GNU/Linux for other reasons.

Also, I think Ubuntu is suitable for newbies because it comes with a big selection of software. When you install Debian, you spend maybe 30 minutes installing all the stuff you know you want, and then you have a very sleek installation. On Ubuntu, I'd imagine the oppiste to be the case for someone who knows what s/he wants: spening a lot of time uninstalling bits of software that are useless to you, and still ending up with a really fat Gnome with its really big footprint. For getting used to Linux, trying different software etc. I think Ubuntu's approach is sound. But at the end of the day, you don't need Evolution and Thunderbird.

So to my mind, Ubuntu and Debian are different, not so much to people who know Debian (what you know about Debian also applies to Ubuntu), but to those who don't want to use the terminal (because it looks like DOS). Think about the threads here that start with a "How do I get X?" I don't think there's a lot of that over at Ubuntu's forums.

If I were to install GNU/Linux on my great grandfather's beige box, I'd probably choose Debian stable, because I would be configuring everything anyway. But for advocating to people who are going to do their own installs, I'll recommend Ubuntu.

All that being said, Debian does have an undeserved reputation of being a distro only suitable to "advanced users". When I decided to install a modern distro and learn Linux, I really just wanted to get Debian (for political reasons), but everywhere I looked, people were warning me against it. So I installed SuSE 9.3. I found it exciting, but really difficult. After I installed Debian, it's only exciting. Thanks to the sheer consistency of the system and the software repositories... once you learn a few basics and get a few habits (like the fact that it may be easier to go into /etc than fiddling with some GUI thing with a bunch of switches and check boxes), you're able to really amazing stuff with little effort.

Blah blah. Sorry for this uninspiring rant.

Regards,
--Simen

Posted: 2006-11-03 20:17
by ajdlinux
an.echte.trilingue wrote:The only difference is the fast mirrors!
Seriously? Debian mirrors actually max out my ADSL connection. The sites that mirror Debian are large unis and ISPs, as well as LUGs and PlanetMirror and the like. The mirrors I use are fast enough.

Posted: 2006-11-03 21:04
by thamarok
ajdlinux wrote:
an.echte.trilingue wrote:The only difference is the fast mirrors!
Seriously? Debian mirrors actually max out my ADSL connection. The sites that mirror Debian are large unis and ISPs, as well as LUGs and PlanetMirror and the like. The mirrors I use are fast enough.
Hahahhaaaa.... Ubuntu's mirrors take an age to load here... debian.org loads a lot faster and I donwload at 1Mb speed :D

Re: my 0.02€

Posted: 2006-11-08 10:26
by dezza
Grifter wrote:
an.echte.trilingue wrote: This demands the question, what makes ubuntu so popular?
the installer and the autoconfig of their system

personally I think it's great that ubuntu is so popular, if interest and popularity grows, maybe we'll see more commercial games ported to linux

doesn't matter which distro you use, as long as you use it
+ alot of people realize that ubuntu is nothing more than just yet another child of the Debian distribution = More Debian users 8)

Posted: 2006-11-16 16:56
by PingFloyd
I'm very happy that Ubuntu came into existence. It's really helped bridge the gap for alot of users and has increased Linux's popularity.

I've always liked Debian. It was actually the second distro of Linux that I ever installed (first distro was Slackware, but I tried my hand with installing Debian very shortly after). Debian definitely has a bit of a steep learning curve in some ways (personally, I don't think the installer is difficult though). Mostly from the standpoint of when you need to tweak something, or do some system admin type of tasks, mainly due to Debian having it's own style of how to tackle things (the big hurdle is trying to figure out, 'what is the Debian way of handling ...'.). However, I've always strongly felt that Debian's way often ends up being a very good way to go about things in the long run, since while they're rather obscure and hard to grasp at first, they often prove to be well thought out means by which to be able to manage and maintain a system, or systems, in a manner that helps one ultimately keep their sanity. There have been many times where I was wondering, 'What were they thinking!?', only to later come to the conclusion, 'Wow! that actually makes alot of good sense.'.

I think one of the reasons that Ubuntu is so popular is because there is a large portion of users that aren't so concerned about things like licensing and their OS being administrator friendly, as much as things being intuitive and easy to pick up. Also, one of the things about Debian, that I really like, is that it really has helped me learn alot of concepts that I wouldn't on other distros due to it taking a more generic approach in some ways. For instance, Ubuntu has always struck me as a distro with striving goals to release something that is highly pre-customized, tweaked, and polished that the user can get to work with minimal need for tweaking or fuss (appeal for the end-user that just 'wants to get their work done or play'). Whereas, Debian has always struck me as a distro that has things tweaked, by default, only merely tweaking where it's common sense that most every user would want (geek or not), but leaving things rather open ended as to avoid alot of assumptions. Where it tends to take things the extra mile is to try eliminate micro management of the system, but it still tries to retain as much flexibility as possible.

I guess I'm not sure where I'm going with all of this in reference to this thread, but to sum it all up, I'm glad that both Debian and Ubuntu exist. I also feel that both of them largely benefit by each other. I also feel that together they're both helping to create an environment that caters really well both geeks/admins and end-users alike.

If someone where to ask me which distro to choose between the two, I would ask them whether they just want things to work, or whether they value learning more. For the latter, Debian is the more ideal in my opinion. It puts you in the position where you going to have to learn it to be productive with it, but it also ends up paying off in alot of ways in the long run by ending up with a system that is more likely to be set up in a manner in which you personally envision as ideal, and that you have a firm grasp on how to operate -- essentially a custom tool that has been molded to fit you well over time.

Posted: 2006-12-05 03:31
by sam81
In my opinion, one important factor that makes Ubuntu more popular is the shorter release cycle. not only because you get the latest version of packages, which might not be of much interest to some people, but also because you get more support for new hardware. When I got my new laptop (Inspiron 9400) in April, I tried to install Debian stable first, and had lots of problems. The only distro where almost everything would work back at the time was Ubuntu (and by June when the new version was released all the essential stuff worked fine), In the while I tried to install etch from time to time, and only in November the new installer was able to recognize my SATA hard drive, and the installation went fine.

Now, I know some people where able to install Sarge on my same laptop using custom kernels and tweaking system configuration files, but though I'm not a complete newbie the whole process looked daunting to me,

new hardware is continuously pushed in the market, and if you have to wait the next Debian stable release for it to get supported, you may have to wait a long time. This doesn't want to be a critic to Debian, which has a different organization and somewhat different aims compared to Ubuntu (for example Ubuntu doesn't support as many architectures as Debian), it's just an observation.

Cheers