[Malvern] Debian and Ubuntu.

[Geoff Bagley]

Hi Ian,

Thanks for the reply.

I have often heard the point you make about Debian keeping up to date.
I have, over the years used both the "stable" and "testing" versions of 
Debian,  and have never felt
constrained by any failure of software to keep up to date. 

However you mentioned the kernel.  That would be more serious I 
suppose.  I guess you mean
the other stuff not keeping up to date with the kernel.  I imagine that 
all the other distros must keep
pretty close to the fruits of the kernel team, which I guess IS up to date.

The biggest recent cock-up with Debian was the ssl fiasco, but that has 
now been fixed.
As far as I know, it never affected me.  I apt-get update most days.

They tell me that Ubuntu is easier to install, but I haven't found 
that.  I have often installed
Debian "stable" over my broadband.  Upgrading to "testing" is also easy 
by alteration to
/etc/apt/sources.list

Knoppix is generally touted as a diagnostic tool.  Does anyone use this 
as an alternative to Ubuntu.
Some Debian-based distros appear to be one-man bands  (Mepis ? ).  That 
would worry me a little.
At least I can trust pure Debian to be just that - pure.  I understand 
that Canonical  are not too fussy about
what Ubuntu includes.  The onus for that must lie with the punter.

Anyway,  many thanks for your views.

There are differences between applications like compilers.  I guess that 
affects all the distros.
Some software can be unnecessarily complex because they are trying to 
support MAC and M$ as well.
The  GNU stuff is nice and clean.

Hope to see you sometime.

Best regards to all the Group.

Geoff.