Debian VS Ubuntu

[kedaha]

The creator of Ubuntu, following the footsteps of Victor Frankenstein in the old story created and gave life to a hideous monster.

Depends how you view it. I run Ubuntu on a couple of machines. For a user who is a) technologically challenged and b) not interested anyway, Ubuntu is a great choice. It just works. Canonical saw this and catered for it, attracting users from Windows by the thousands. From that perspective it's a very successful monster.

I view it from the standpoint of free software according to the definition given by the Free Software Foundation. I think that Ubuntu perpetuates the use of hideous non-free software and binary blob-ware which we have no way of knowing may restrict or compromise users' online privacy and security. To state the obvious: The more people use non-free software, the less they will use free software.
As for users who are "technologically challenged" and/or "not interested anyway," I wholeheartedly support Debian Pure Blends. As quoted, for example here:

It is not unusual for these target users to be less technically competent than the stereotypical Linux user. These people are often not interested in the computer for its own sake, but just want it to work for them. Imagine the frustration of a doctor who has to move the focus of interest from the patient to his stupid computer that does not work as expected.

And also:

Furthermore, most target users have no or little interest in administration of their computer. In short, the optimal situation would be that he would not even notice the existence of the computer, but just focus on using the application to accomplish the task at hand.

So the idea is that you don't have to be some sort of techno geek or linux systems administrator to enjoy the benefits of free software as a user.

The difference between a Debian Pure Blend and Ubuntu is that the former complies 100% with our Debian Social Contract and the latter does not.

Of course a major problem is hardware but it is not an insuperable obstacle as, for example a company like Purism, which has set out to make hardware devices, including mobile phones, laptops and desktops running exclusively on free software, has shown.

[Hallvor]

NFT5: There are different types of computer users. Some just want to get their work done with as little hassle as possible. Others like to tinker, fix stuff that breaks and learn more about how the system works.

It is the same way with cars: Not everyone wants the most reliable and well tested cars. Some people want the experimental models that make heads turn. They want to be seen and admired, much like the people telling everyone that they use Arch...

[NFT5]

The difference between a Debian Pure Blend and Ubuntu is that the former complies 100% with our Debian Social Contract and the latter does not.

I'd kind of forgotten about Pure Blends since the ones that may have had relevance for me are long dead and Debian itself can be made, fairly easily, to do the job that I want. You make an important point though that goes to the heart of the original question in this thread.

By and large I'm past the distro hopping phase, at least in the sense of seeking the "perfect" distribution. I came to realise some time ago that I already had it. That said, I do maintain a multi-boot system, just because I'm curious and sometimes like to see where some other distros are heading. But, for production use, it's Debian Stable all the way. The only Ubuntu installation that gets used is one for my wife who uses some streaming that is still Flash based and I want to ensure that she has continuity when Flash updates happen, without my having to go and manually update here system. That said, she's currently using Debian that I've configured with Flash from MX and that seems to be working well, so won't need Ubuntu in the future.

By and large I do subscribe to the Debian philosophy, the primary exception to that being that we've had to run Windows in virtual machines for one particular piece of accounting software. I'm quite pleased that, from 1st July that software will be replaced with one that is Debian compliant. That means that Windows and Virtualbox will no longer be necessary, bringing all of our machines to almost 100% free, with just the odd exception of some non-free to run Realtek chips on some motherboards.

There are different types of computer users. Some just want to get their work done with as little hassle as possible. Others like to tinker, fix stuff that breaks and learn more about how the system works.

Yes, I agree and understand completely. I like to tinker but my users don't. My point here, and what I referred to in my earlier post as well as led up to in the first part of this post, is that Stable is the better choice when compared to Sid and particularly for the member, jdef, to whom I was responding and who had extolled the virtues of Xubuntu but found that upgrades were an issue. If that was the case then the propensity of Sid to fail and need fixing was probably going to be a bigger issue than the advantages of rolling upgrades.

It was just an observation, really, from seeing the number of people who switch to Debian from Ubuntu and Mint particularly and go straight to Sid without understanding how the Ubuntu and Mint organisations had protected them from the vagaries of what is an operating system still in development.

[dilberts_left_nut]

(btw, many long-term Sid users say "unstable" is misnomer ... that is TBD for me)

'unstable' (along with 'stable') refers to the rate of change, not any measure of "reliability".