Ubuntu Linux and the future of Debian [LWN.net]

Ubuntu Linux and the future of Debian

Posted Oct 21, 2004 8:53 UTC (Thu) by uwaucs (subscriber, #6160)
Parent article: Ubuntu Linux and the future of Debian

Ubuntu is fantastic.

I've been running the AMD64 distribution for a while, and it's stable and instantly useful. I just installed it on my Thinkpad T-41 and:
* the ipw2100 wireless card (GPL driver, binary hotplug loaded firmware) worked without any config, and even during the _install_ process.
* it autoconfigured X wonderfully, GL worked, even to the point of noticing I have a synaptics touchpad and setting it up so that scrolling, tap-click, tap-drag, etc works.
* sound just worked, etc.

Not only that, but the base install is a _fully working_ desktop - every application you'll generally want to do work is there. It's very convincing. I'm a fan of Debian, but this is just so much less pain with all the advantages of a plain Debian system.

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Ubuntu Linux and the future of Debian

Posted Oct 21, 2004 23:12 UTC (Thu) by jmason (guest, #13586) [Link]

Good news -- I've been wondering how Ubuntu would deal with my T41.

The other stumbling block, however, is KDE support -- although their FAQ states that they do have the KDE packages in 'universe', but it's not quite as polished as the GNOME support just yet.

I'm looking forward to trying it out; reportedly, if you're seat-of-the-pants-hacky enough, you can apt-get dist-upgrade your way from Debian unstable directly to Ubuntu so I might do that ;)