Where's the Debian we all knew?

[mdlbear]

Debian Etch is not ready for release

When etch was installed we wanted to access the USB disk in order to move some pieces of the backup to the new system. It was pure horror. After plugging the cable into the USB slot, an icon appeared on the screen and after clicked caused the system to mount the first partition on the external disk. It worked. Out of the box. Without tweaking anything. That's so non-Debian...

I also noticed a while ago that a USB mouse with a scroll wheel was also simply recognised by X.Org in etch and just worked. Huh? That's not how Debian is supposed to react.

Where are the hours of fiddling around how to properly add USB stuff to the system? Where are the evenings you needed to debug such stuff? Nowadays it just works? Where's the Debian we all knew?

(from Debian Weekly News #38)

Comments

[aerowolf.livejournal.com]

Ah, so basically, Ubuntu is once again showing Debian what it COULD be, if its developers weren't so obsessed about the software copyrights and instead focused on how to get the software working all together?

The latest Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Edubuntu releases (6.06) are all LTS -- long-term security updates are pledged by the core team for 3 years on desktop and 5 years on server.

And it was funny -- it's not ready for release, it's too user-friendly!

[mdlbear]

Personally, I like having Debian around to keep the rest of them honest. And Ubuntu has a much easier time of it -- it's restricted to two or three architectures and requires much more memory and disk space. And has fewer packages in the core set.

Although the licensing debates get most of the air time, they weren't a factor in the long gap between Woody and Sarge -- the entire debate was deferred until after Sarge. And it's not the main factor in Etch.

If you want to put Linux on your router or your hand-held, Ubuntu isn't an option. Debian is.