Shuttleworth on the Ubuntu 12.04 desktop [LWN.net]

Another bailout

Posted Mar 5, 2012 23:33 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

This sort of thing puzzles me.

There may be reasons to prefer Debian to Ubuntu, but the support (or lack of it) of the different desktop environments doesn't seem like one of them.

If you are unhappy with Kubuntu because it's a 'second class citizen' and only gets community support, switching to a distro where there is nothing _but_ community support doesn't make sense.

Another bailout

Posted Mar 5, 2012 23:54 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Sure it does. Ubuntu is making it harder and harder to turn off Ubuntu-specific stuff, like brain-dead notifications, new-age scrollbars, presence integration, Ubuntu One, etc.

Another bailout

Posted Mar 6, 2012 0:19 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

hmm, I sure haven't had any problems with these things, all it took was apt-get install kubuntu-desktop a few years ago and Unity (and it's related stuff) doesn't bother me at all.

Now, if you are trying to run the default desktop and turn that stuff off, yes it is hard, but just try a different desktop

something about babies and bathwater seems to be relevant here :-)

Another bailout

Posted Mar 6, 2012 1:01 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Switching to Kubuntu tosses out a similar amount of bathwater as switching to Debian doesn't it?

In fact I'd argue that, if you've followed Ubuntu's Gnome desktop since Dapper, you'll find it easier to switch to Gnome on Debian than switching to KDE. But I have no data to back this up. :)

Another bailout

Posted Mar 6, 2012 1:13 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

if you dislike the move from GNOME2 to Unity, then switching to GNOME2 on debian is probably simpler than switching to KDE on ubuntu.

But keep in mind that GNOME2 isn't being maintained, so your time on GNOME2/debian is very limited.

it would probably be easier to switch to <GNOME2 fork> on ubuntu than switching to <GNOME2 fork> on debian

If you are happy with GNOME3, then switching to GNOME3 on ubuntu is easier than switching to GNOME3 on debian

But I was assuming that you were moving to some desktop other than GNOME3/Unity, and so I was saying that switching to KDE/XFCE on Ubuntu throws away less of the knowledge/experience/support of Ubuntu than switching to KDE/XFCE on Debian would (and both throw away far less than switching to KDE/XFCE on a rpm based distro

Another bailout

Posted Mar 6, 2012 10:31 UTC (Tue) by fb (subscriber, #53265) [Link]

> Sure it does. Ubuntu is making it harder and harder to turn off Ubuntu-specific stuff, like brain-dead notifications, new-age scrollbars, presence integration, Ubuntu One, etc.

I second this.

It is a pain to turn off all the background indexing crap, and hype integration from Ubuntu. On older computers it gets worse as resources are scarce.

I mean the whole point of using Ubuntu instead of Debian was /not/ having to spend weeks fine tuning the system.

FWIW, anyone tried using Lubuntu (LXDE based)?

Another bailout

Posted Mar 6, 2012 20:05 UTC (Tue) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

> FWIW, anyone tried using Lubuntu (LXDE based)?

Yes, briefly. It's ok, but I think I like Linux Mint LXDE better. The default configuration and package selection is more to my liking.

Another bailout

Posted Mar 6, 2012 0:09 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

The sales guy in question is not technical. He uses Linux (specifically, Debian) at work because he has no choice. He found he liked it so asked me to recommend a distro for home. At the time, I said Ubuntu because it was the easiest to install.

As time has gone by, he's become unhappy with Ubuntu's direction and also confident enough to tackle installing Debian on his own, so... he jumped ship.

I'm a bit surprised by the posters on this thread who've jumped to an RPM-based distribution instead of to another Debian derivative or Debian itself... I'd have thought learning the RPM-based tools would take a lot of time.

Another bailout

Posted Mar 6, 2012 5:09 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

From my limited exposure to dpkg distros, switching out apt-get/aptitude for yum (installs, repository searching, etc.) and apt-cache for rpm -q (for local package information, repoquery for remote packages) on the command line tended to be in the ballpark for what I'm looking for.

dpkg vs. rpm

Posted Mar 6, 2012 7:30 UTC (Tue) by Felix.Braun (subscriber, #3032) [Link]

I have tried Fedora twice to replace my Ubuntu laptop. I still haven't found a replacement for aptitude in the rpm-world. I like to know why every package on my system has been pulled in. Aptitude lets me inspect this information and automatically removes all packages that are not necessary anymore if the reason for their installation gets removed later on.

While all of this is theoretically possible on a rpm-based distro. I haven't found the tool to make this sort of operation practical. As far as I understand, the extension yum-autoremove-leaves is not recommended. Maybe this is because there is no tool that allows users to mark packages as "autoremovable". If there is one, I would like to know because I might try to install Fedora again in the future.

dpkg vs. rpm

Posted Mar 6, 2012 7:40 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Yeah, that plugin is...less than perfect. The yum history mechanism works really well though for undoing installs of things, but it does fall down when things get tangled after some time has passed. ISTR yum remembering reasons for a package's installation, but I don't know if things are wired up to it.

dpkg vs. rpm

Posted Mar 6, 2012 18:00 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

> ISTR yum remembering reasons for a package's installation, but I don't know if things are wired up to it.

Indeed, any release with yumdb can get the reason a package was installed with:

yumdb get reason $pkg_wildcard

A tool could filter out the reason = user packages, determine what has nothing depending on it and go from there. It could also allow the user to change the reason to something specific (e.g., $project-development) which could then be removed if you stop working on $project for whatever reason.

dpkg vs. rpm

Posted Mar 6, 2012 16:50 UTC (Tue) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link]

Aptitude lets me inspect this information and automatically removes all packages that are not necessary anymore

urpme --auto-orphans

dpkg vs. rpm

Posted Mar 7, 2012 6:53 UTC (Wed) by michich (subscriber, #17902) [Link]

yum now has the option 'clean_requirements_on_remove'. If enabled, removing a package works like with the remove-with-leaves plugin, but better:
http://skvidal.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/orphaned-dep-clea...

Another bailout

Posted Mar 6, 2012 8:09 UTC (Tue) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

Of course switching from rpm to deb won't take a lot of time. The difference is between one graphical package manager and another, and sometimes not even that. Real users won't notice the difference in the file extension for the packages, and, conditioned by the varied locations of the search field in websites, will be able to find the search bar in the packager gui and install their stuff. Oh, and press Ok if the update notifier tells them to update.

Another bailout

Posted Mar 6, 2012 10:26 UTC (Tue) by fb (subscriber, #53265) [Link]

> Of course switching from rpm to deb won't take a lot of time.

As someone who uses DEB based distros for 15+ years and who now uses RHEL at work I can say that -in my humble experience-

- using one installer or the other makes little to no difference;
- the set of packaged software readily available for install varies a lot.

Downloading and compiling all packages and their dependencies to have all the tools I wanted in RHEL did take more time than what I would be OK with. (Still a million times better than not being able to use Linux @ work).

Another bailout

Posted Mar 6, 2012 13:09 UTC (Tue) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

Probably you'd have found most (if not all) you were looking for in EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux). Or go grab the source RPMs from Fedora and build those. Having the stuff tracked by your package manager is a big plus.

Another bailout

Posted Mar 23, 2012 11:28 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]

The big enterprise distro's have extra repo's. One is mentioned above already and you can also find stuff on the Open Build Service instance SUSE is running: software.opensuse.org RHEL 6 search. OBS builds about 170.000 packages. The majority is build for openSUSE but many are build for more distro's, where you'll get something like this if you want to get it. It's a bit more scattered but there's plenty of stuff for RPM based distro's, too...