New Article about Ubuntu being an unreliable base - cites Crunchbang

Thanks for posting this; it makes interesting reading.

I agree about the article's lack of substance - generally. However, she gets some flack below about that and some other issues, and she makes a bit of a come back in the replies.

  Peace

I was more interested in her distro of choice at the moment. Salix OS looks very interesting

As for the article itself it's a little light on. Most people who use Ubuntu regularly know that the releases between the LTS releases are for testing and innovation and will have bugs. The next LTS looks like it will be a great release and very stable - that is if you like the Ubuntu defaults that are hard to move away from.

I heard that this is why some of the better distros are moving to Debian

There is also Wolvix with default XFCE (DE/WM) and Slackware under hood.

I'm not sure that was ever the aim of Ubuntu. From what I've seen they've never passed much back upstream and have used Debian as a means to their own ends. Not that there is anything specifically wrong with that, Ubuntu has done a fine job in bringing Linux to the masses. It's probably just us elitists that look down on it

Salix though is really interesting. It's the combined effort of a group of Devs that broke away from Zenwalk in 2009. I know they are keen to not draw comparisons or make negative comments about each others efforts so I won't go there That said, I'm finding Salix quite similar to Crunchbang in many ways. They have taken a very stable slackware base and refined it for a specific user base and made the whole install process etc much simpler. I'm looking forward to getting to know it a bit better. I've always had a thing for slack based distros but I don't think it will be replacing Statler any time soon

Salix OS  on DistroWatch 2010-04-09  Just released First Live CD

Funny of the screenshots I liked the openbox shots the most.
Ouch, has Lilo as bootloader; have horrible experiences with that and will not work on a multiboot linux system using grub.
Can be solved though.

Article with comments is definitely worth a read.
Seems that the clouds are gathering above the Lynx.

Last edited by pablokal (2010-04-12 19:31:31)

Me too, and I thought I was breaking some unwritten rule of distro-hopping or something, lol. When I test-drive a distro, I want the experience to be exactly like it was meant to be, alone of the computer with all the machine's resources at it's disposal. Especilly because my machine is an older one anyway.

Got school all day today, haven't had a chance to test-drive Salix OS yet... maybe tomorrow. But I'm looking forward to it very much, because it's completely out of my Debian/Ubuntu familiar comfort zone.

Doing it one-drive at a time,
Robin

An issue with one printer is pretty much what her argument is based on. I've had no stability problems with any release of Ubuntu that wasn't a development one, and even know I sit here typing on Lucid B1 which hasn't had problems since I upgraded from A3. Her follow up article though seems more stable itself, and she her comment on the Ubuntu community is correct, generally speaking, the Community is excellent, the most powerful force Ubuntu has. Ubuntu Forums are a minefield of information, and often turn up in Google with answers

I don't think it would really be better to "tout LTS as the stable "Linux for human beings" and the six month releases as cutting edge." LTS's are stable, but often lack the features that people will want. I had serious problems back on Hardy with Samba networking, and though they are probably fixed at this stage, moving to Intrepid and Jaunty cured them. Most of my systems run Karmic. My point is that that stance makes one version seem un-stable, when in reality, it's stable. Development releases, they are the unstable versions.

But Ubuntu being an unreliable base, simply because of one particular printer? I've had no distro work "out-of-the-box" on as many systems as I have Ubuntu.

Disclaimer: I may be very biased, being an Ubuntu user

^ Yeah, I pretty much saw the printer as the entry point into the regressions handling part of the article. I don't necessarily agree with a few things in the article, and you're right that the comments section (and followup) fills it out, but yep, it's more than just a story about a printer.

***

Salix does look interesting, I've never used a Slackware-based distro (or vanilla Slackware), might have to check that out at some point.

Last edited by chillicampari (2010-04-13 20:06:58)