Where next after Ubuntu?

pickarooney

I've had it with Ubuntu. Shoddy releases, removed hardware support and the lunatic ideals of Canonical just seem so far removed from the very spirit of freedom of choice I value in an OS.

Next time I want to try something different... but not too different.

I use XFCE and have a tailored setup that I like. I don't have heaps of time and even less inclination to recreate that in GNOME (although being GTK based it wouldn't be that hard to do I guess) and KDE4 is hideous.

I like apt and would be reticent to use a package manager which wasn't at least as good.

I'd really like to move to a rolling release instead of periodical version releases.
I would like to have fairly up to date versions of all the most common software available and easy to install. Command line preferably - I've never seen the point of visual installers.

I really don't want to have to format my /home partition as it has all my photos and music.

A good online community resource would be nice. Ubuntu's forums just move too fast and threads disappear within minutes if they're not picked up on.

Should I be looking at some debian rolling release or mint debian or Arch, do you think? If I had time I'd like to give gentoo a go but at the moment that's a non-runner.

AndrewMc

It sounds like Debian Testing is what you're looking for, or if you're slightly more adventurous, Debian Unstable. Testing is the more reliable of the two (obviously), but goes into feature freeze for quite a while leading up to the next stable release.

You may even be able to migrate from Ubuntu to Debian with a bit of work without reinstalling, but since you have /home in a separate partition a fresh install is probably cleaner.

pickarooney

Is Unstable a rolling release? I'm fairly sure I want to move in that direction. Arch scares me a little bit but I think I'll try make sense of it on the craptop first.

AndrewMc

Normally both testing and unstable are rolling releases. Only during the lead-up to a release does testing freeze. Once the release happens, Testing follows unstable quite closely; packages are delayed by up to 10 days before moving from unstable to testing so really serious bugs can be caught in time.

If was in your position, I'd wait until Debian Stable releases (maybe a few months), and then switch to Testing. But that's me

pickarooney

I'm a bit confused. I understood a rolling release to be one with no "releases" so that you aren't required to reformat every 6 months but permanently have the latest updates available and would not have a system that had 'version 10.4' or 'version 10.10' like in Ubuntu.

pickarooney

I have no qualms about trying anything like gentoo or arch on the craptop as I can afford to mess it up. On the main PC I can't afford more than a couple of hours reinstalling and setting up a new system. I would have to get used to a new distro on the test machine first before I would do that, but that's cool by me. The problem is time; I only have maximum three hours a week free.

Apart from the learning process, what would I stand to gain from a gentoo or arch system? Is performance noticeably better?

ntlbell

pickarooney wrote: »

I'm a bit confused. I understood a rolling release to be one with no "releases" so that you aren't required to reformat every 6 months but permanently have the latest updates available and would not have a system that had 'version 10.4' or 'version 10.10' like in Ubuntu.

unstable will eventually be frozen so it's not really what you're looking for.

arch is probably your best bet.

AndrewMc

pickarooney wrote: »

I'm a bit confused. I understood a rolling release to be one with no "releases" so that you aren't required to reformat every 6 months but permanently have the latest updates available and would not have a system that had 'version 10.4' or 'version 10.10' like in Ubuntu.

I'll try to explain it a bit better, so

Debian has three main versions: stable, testing and unstable.

Debian's stable releases are the same as Ubuntu's. Packages are fixed at the version they were at for release, and only critical bug fixes (almost always security-related) are published for it.

Brand new packages are uploaded to unstable and are available immediately. They work most of the time, but you may occasionally get broken packages.

A package that survives a while in unstable (up to 10 days, maybe less if it's urgent) is copied to testing, and is then immediately available to all users of testing.

So, thus far, testing and unstable work essentially the same, but with testing only meant to receive packages that don't appear to break (much).

Now, when Debian wants to produce a new stable release the migration of packages from unstable to testing is stopped; testing is "frozen". Only new packages that fix release-critical bugs are accepted. When the number of release-critical bugs reaches zero, the new release is ready. All packages in testing are copied to the new "stable" release. Testing can then be "unfrozen" and all those packages waiting in unstable will flood in and the cycle begins again.

Much nitty-gritty left out, but that's the general idea. The only real problem with testing is that the freeze can last for quite a while. "Squeeze", the next stable, was frozen back in early August and has a while to go yet. Some core packages were fixed even earlier — the kernel was decided to be 2.6.32 as far back as October 2009. Debian's stable releases are really, really stable!

pickarooney

OK, I think I have it pretty much understood now. Gentoo, on my hardware just sounds like a non-runner for the foreseeable future but Arch should be a good project for the test machine. I guess packages in Debian testing will be recent enough so I might just give that a lash on the main machine some time soon. I haven't much to lose as there'll be virtually nothing new to learn relative to ubuntu, right?

Capt'n Midnight

you already know that you could install LTS server and then XFCE and not have to worry about updates for years.

If you want the latest and greatest then you are a beta tester for the stable versions. Simple as, you can't have it both ways.

If you want stable go for Debian, but it won't be bleeding edge.

why are you considering mint ?

Grudaire

I'm using Linux Mint Debian, which is Debian with very few things changed. It's 100% compatible with Debian, might be a way of being slightly more adventurous without changing everything!

There should be a new version of the 32 bit version Dvd this week.

syklops

Once more into the breach, dear friends...

How do you feel about Fedora? I moved from Debian based systems to Fedora on my Laptop a couple of months ago. It has many of the things you want, plus some more on top.

You requested:

I like apt and would be reticent to use a package manager which wasn't at least as good.

Yum is in my opinion, just as good as Apt. It has just as many features, and for quick package install/update is just as easy and as powerful as Apt.

I'd really like to move to a rolling release instead of periodical version releases.

Use Fedora Rawhide, more info here

I would like to have fairly up to date versions of all the most common software available and easy to install. Command line preferably - I've never seen the point of visual installers.

Under Rawhide, software is continually updated.

I really don't want to have to format my /home partition as it has all my photos and music.

If you don't already have one, and even if you don't follow my other advice, get thee a backup solution pronto. Disaster can happen at any time especially if you are testing or playing with Distros.

That aside, Fedora(and most other distros) can be configured to use an existing home partition.

A good online community resource would be nice. Ubuntu's forums just move too fast and threads disappear within minutes if they're not picked up on.

One of the things that put me off ubuntuforums at 1.2Million members, 54k of them active, the fora were getting very large, with inadequate moderation of fora going on, and so it was getting harder to find the information you needed. I don't mean to be snobbish but it had also attracted a lot of non-techy non-geeks. My problem with this was not that they did not know much about Linux, but that they did not have standard internet forum etiquette, so threads were starting with "My mouse does not work, how do I fix it", with no technical information etc. being included.

Fedoraforum.org with a membership of about 164k is large enough to show a decent demographic of users while not being too large that moderation is difficult.

Should I be looking at some debian rolling release or mint debian or Arch, do you think? If I had time I'd like to give gentoo a go but at the moment that's a non-runner.

I would not use Mint if I were you. You want something different but not too different? There is very little difference between Ubuntu, and Ubuntu Mint, and Debian Mint. There are all just tweaked versions of Debian. Apart from the initial difference in setting up the systems, you would notice little in the actual running of the system, and if that's the case then why bother moving?

Pygmalion

OSI wrote: »

Well Gentoo is source based, so everything you install will be compiled against your hardware, you can guarantee you won't get any quicker unless you code it yourself.

Depends really, Arch's packages for 32-bit processors have always been optimised for slightly newer processors anyway (they don't support the really old 32-bit processors), so you get a good deal of the optimisation there (as opposed to distros which have to compile super generic packages with no new processor features).
On 64-bit machines I imagine Gentoo wouldn't really provide a speed-boost at all, as all distros would be letting GCC optimise their 64-bit packages as much as it can and atm I'm not even sure if GCC does anything noticably different on one than another.

That said, I really like Gentoo, I'm using it now and I don't think it's half as bad as people say, the USE flags are pretty awesome.
Quite annoying if you really want something install right this moment, but the only things I've ever really found to eat up tons of time installing would be KDE and Chromium, and you can always leave an update running overnight, or while you head out to do the shopping, if it contains a ton of large packages.

Mycroft H

Im going to suggest crunchbang 10


It's an debian testing disto with openbox for its wm.

Extremely light and fast. Very uncluttered, with only the minimal amount of packages to get you going with. With a simple change of the sources.list, it can go from being disto with newish packages that is super stable to a bang up to date system that's still more stable then ubuntu with debian sid.


Because debian testing and sid (the bleeding edge branch that is still very stable) are continually updated, crunchbang is in effect a rolling release model and it uses apt, arguably the best package manager on the go.

The community is regarded as one of the nicest as well, having a great forum and irc channel

I know I sound like I'm advertising for them, buts its the only distro that lasted more then 3 months on my laptop





http://crunchbanglinux.org/

evercloserunion

Windows 98.

Naikon

ntlbell wrote: »

unstable will eventually be frozen so it's not really what you're looking for.

arch is probably your best bet.

Arch is far worse than Ubuntu when it comes to stability. Far worse, even with stable repos. I hate to say it, but Fedora is more reliable than it, although LFS wins over both due to downloading and compiling everthing yourself. Ubuntu LTR release is what you should aim for. Debian + Ubuntu are great distros imo, even better than Red Hat in certain respects(apt being one).

Basically, any Debian derived distro is the best bet, simply because the community and package selections.

Arch--;

Naikon

Pygmalion wrote: »

Depends really, Arch's packages for 32-bit processors have always been optimised for slightly newer processors anyway (they don't support the really old 32-bit processors), so you get a good deal of the optimisation there (as opposed to distros which have to compile super generic packages with no new processor features).
On 64-bit machines I imagine Gentoo wouldn't really provide a speed-boost at all, as all distros would be letting GCC optimise their 64-bit packages as much as it can and atm I'm not even sure if GCC does anything noticably different on one than another.

That said, I really like Gentoo, I'm using it now and I don't think it's half as bad as people say, the USE flags are pretty awesome.
Quite annoying if you really want something install right this moment, but the only things I've ever really found to eat up tons of time installing would be KDE and Chromium, and you can always leave an update running overnight, or while you head out to do the shopping, if it contains a ton of large packages.

The time spent compiling **** is better spent doing other things. I will and can compile if I have too, I just prefer not to unless I am developing software myself. Besides, emerge takes ages to update the system in comparison to the simple one line 'apt-get dist-upgrade'. Not slating Gentoo, but I think the proposed "speed advantage" of source packages is not all that big. You are really playing a dangerous game when compiling with -O3 I reckon. Stability > speed. A bigger advantage would be to ensure you are running a low latency kernel, along with the 4 line cpatch that was recently posted.

Gentoo is brilliant for learning, but I would not use it for production enviroments imo. Don't get me started on circular dependencies.

/awaits the flame

evercloserunion

Naikon wrote: »

Arch is far worse than Ubuntu when it comes to stability. Far worse, even with stable repos. I hate to say it, but Fedora is more reliable than it, although LFS wins over both due to downloading and compiling everthing yourself. Ubuntu LTR release is what you should aim for. Debian + Ubuntu are great distros imo, even better than Red Hat in certain respects(apt being one).

Basically, any Debian derived distro is the best bet, simply because the community and package selections.

Arch--;

Unstable doesn't mean "breaks whenever you try to use it". I've used Arch for months and never had a problem I couldn't fix in seconds, I'm sure many others have had a similar experience.

Having the very most stable distro is not a goal which everyone finds important. Ultimately, stability is an advantage which must be weighed against other advantages and disadvantages and weighted according to the individual's own needs. If you read the OP you will find that stability, while (presumably) important, is not on the list of priorities. What is listed as explicitly preferred is:

- Freedom of choice
- Good package manager
- Rolling release
- Up to date software
- Command line installer
- Good online community
- Not Gentoo

Arch has all of these things. It may not be your thing, but it seems to me like it would definitely work for pickarooney.

Disclaimer: I'm not a fanboy, really :P I just happen to think that Arch would really suit the OP's needs.

Naikon

evercloserunion wrote: »

Unstable doesn't mean "breaks whenever you try to use it". I've used Arch for months and never had a problem I couldn't fix in seconds, I'm sure many others have had a similar experience.

Having the very most stable distro is not a goal which everyone finds important. Ultimately, stability is an advantage which must be weighed against other advantages and disadvantages and weighted according to the individual's own needs. If you read the OP you will find that stability, while (presumably) important, is not on the list of priorities. What is listed as explicitly preferred is:

- Freedom of choice
- Good package manager
- Rolling release
- Up to date software
- Command line installer
- Good online community
- Not Gentoo

Arch has all of these things. It may not be your thing, but it seems to me like it would definitely work for pickarooney.

Disclaimer: I'm not a fanboy, really :P I just happen to think that Arch would really suit the OP's needs.

Sorry, I tend to be myopic when it comes to peoples needs. I take stability over absolutely everything else, so I am not a huge fan of Arch. I do however, recognise it's place as a bleeding edge distro provided you know what you are doing to fix things. I can fix broken stuff, but I prefer not to, as in setup the box, throw it in the corner and update it once a while. Development boxes are a different story.

No doubt though, Arch has very new packages(even newer than debian testing in most cases, so it's a massive plus for people who want to keep up to date on features. I however, prefer stability to the point that I use Debian stable/Ubuntu LTR on all my machines. Debian packages can be as old as your grandmother:P

pickarooney

I'm really enjoying this exchange

Just to clarify a couple of thing in relation to why I want to change.

The last properly working version of Ubuntu for me was Jaunty. Since then none of the releases have supported my TV card. I've tried all the tricks from the simple installation of nonfree firmware to messing about with modprobe and have not been able to make it work. To be honest, I watch very little TV and don't really need the TV card but it bugs the hell out of me that they would make a change that means it no longer works and there's no sign of any solution to it despite months of digging and asking on forums. It's such a chore to have to try and fix things that used to work out of the box every time I install a new release - hence the wish to move to a rolling release setup.

On a related note, my laptop is old and needs some special attention. Every single time I upgrade it, the graphics card and sound card stop working. It doesn't usually take more than 5 minutes to fix them as I'm used to it now, but it's still annoying to have to do this all the time. That said, I can't get the nvidia drivers to work under Maverick and I simply don't have hours to waste trying to get something this basic to work.

I would have been perfectly happy sticking with Jaunty on both machines but the music player I use (guayadeque) requires Feisty or higher to compile the latest SVN version. That, and the end of support packages kind of forced me to upgrade. I kind of resent that.

Ubuntu will always be GNOME-centric and KDE, XFCE etc. will trail along behind. That's not a major issue and is understandable but as an XFCE user I find it very difficult to get solutions to problems I encouter in Xubuntu. that said, there's no guarantee it will be any easier with another distro so this point may be moot.

Stability is not a major deal-breaker for me. Obviously I don't want my system crashing every 5 minutes but a couple of bugs every so often is no sweat. It's a hobby as much as anything and the odd challence is a welcome distraction. I want to be able to use the latest/SVN version of programs I use every day without waiting months for releases.

ntlbell

Naikon wrote: »

Arch is far worse than Ubuntu when it comes to stability. Far worse, even with stable repos. I hate to say it, but Fedora is more reliable than it, although LFS wins over both due to downloading and compiling everthing yourself. Ubuntu LTR release is what you should aim for. Debian + Ubuntu are great distros imo, even better than Red Hat in certain respects(apt being one).

Basically, any Debian derived distro is the best bet, simply because the community and package selections.

Arch--;

I think he's a bit bonkers anyway :pac:

If it's for a machine one depends on of course Debian or even FreeBSD for a rock solid pretty much hassel free desktop would be the way forward imo

But that's not what he seems to want

syklops

ntlbell wrote: »

I think he's a bit bonkers anyway :pac:

If it's for a machine one depends on of course Debian or even FreeBSD for a rock solid pretty much hassel free desktop would be the way forward imo

But that's not what he seems to want

All he wants is cutting edge code, but with little or no bugs, and no glitches when upgrading. No biggy.

:pac:

pickarooney

syklops wrote: »

All he wants is cutting edge code, but with little or no bugs, and no glitches when upgrading. No biggy.

:pac:

I think maybe Windows might be the answer

Johnboy1951

Have a look at PCLinuxOS ......... rolling release, very up to date repositories, available in KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce, E17 & Openbox.

Would surely be worth giving it a spin as a liveCD to see if it recognises your hardware correctly.

Repository snapshot ISOs were released in Dec, so the 2010.12 series of ISOs is reasonably up to date.

.... but maybe it would be a bit too different to what you are used to ...... RPM not Deb etc .....

pickarooney

Hmm, apt-get works with RPMs also apaprently...

Locally installed versions of PCLinuxOS utilize the Advanced Packaging Tool (or APT), a package management system (originally from the Debian distribution), together with Synaptic, a GUI frontend to APT for easy software installation. PCLinuxOS has over 12,000 rpm software packages available from our software repository.

I'm not sure what the essential differences between .deb and .rpm are in that case.

syklops

pickarooney wrote: »

Hmm, apt-get works with RPMs also apaprently...



I'm not sure what the essential differences between .deb and .rpm are in that case.

It always amuses me, when people compare Debian-based systems with Redhat based systems, that people go, in their mind Debian==Apt-get= , where as RH == rpm =

Whether the system uses rpm or Deb, most users nowadays do not see the actual packages because they use package maintenance tools like apt and Yum. Apt can be installed and configured on most systems, including RedHat/Fedora and PCLinuxOS, so whether it is an RPM-based system or a Deb based system is now just in the realm of personal preference.

Naikon

syklops wrote: »

It always amuses me, when people compare Debian-based systems with Redhat based systems, that people go, in their mind Debian==Apt-get= , where as RH == rpm =

Whether the system uses rpm or Deb, most users nowadays do not see the actual packages because they use package maintenance tools like apt and Yum. Apt can be installed and configured on most systems, including RedHat/Fedora and PCLinuxOS, so whether it is an RPM-based system or a Deb based system is now just in the realm of personal preference.

True dat. YaST is very high level. A dependency resolution system is always layered on top of the actual package managment system. rpm was never really designed with the intention to allow for automatic dependency resolution.

Johnboy1951

pickarooney wrote: »

Hmm, apt-get works with RPMs also apaprently...



I'm not sure what the essential differences between .deb and .rpm are in that case.

Well I have seen some people with very definite views on such things and who say they would not use one package type or another.

The way PCLOS as a rolling release operates from the perspective of the user is quite different to Ubuntu.

For instance
there is only one repository which has many mirrors
you use only one in Synaptic because mirrors do not sync exactly together.
Everything for PCLOS is delivered from that one repository.

The whole system is updated at one time ....... to try updating some packages and not others can lead to dependencies getting out of sync. So, the whole lot is updated together ..... about once a week is advised.

All available DEs are available from the same repository.
There are meta packages such as task-gnome or such which will install the Gnome DE alongside the existing DE (maybe KDE) and the user has a choice at login which environment to use.

There may be two users logged in simultaneously using different DEs ..... can be useful for comparing DEs on hardware etc.

So it may be too different to what you are used to ....... but also it may be an adventure

regards.

PrzemoF

pickarooney wrote: »

I'd really like to move to a rolling release instead of periodical version releases.
I would like to have fairly up to date versions of all the most common software available and easy to install. Command line preferably - I've never seen the point of visual installers.

I really don't want to have to format my /home partition as it has all my photos and music.

You won't have to format /home - it's linux. If you have it as a separate partition as you said you don't have to touch it whan changing distro.

I'm not sure what you're expecting form your next distro, but if you want a rolling release with cutting edge packages and you don't need magic package installator like ubuntu has try PLD linux. It's rpm based, with outstanding package management (poldek). You should be experienced linux user to enjoy it, otherwise it might be to hard to handle.


P.S. I wish my employer used linux...

Johnboy1951

I may be a bit out of step with others, but I would strongly advise that a new /home is created when moving to a new distro.
By all means save the old /home contents for access to files you may need or have forgotten about.

I have found that different distros use different configurations and attempting to use an existing /home will most likely result in instability and glitches.

Start clean and import whatever it is you wish to bring in from the old setup. Give the new setup the best start it can have and don't lumber it with misconfigurations.

regards.