Re: [Hampshire] Ubuntu + Debian

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 09:59:40AM +0000, john lewis wrote:
> Ubunutu has adopted a different policy with regular version upgrades
> at defined intervals and sticking to this has caused a few problems I
> believe for people moving from one version to another.
>

Nobody forces you to upgrade if you are using a currently supported version. Indeed you can continue to use
an old unsupported version if you dont mind not getting updates.

In addition, some people don't actually read the documentation and do one or all of the following which may
compomise their system stability/integrity when they upgrade Ubuntu:-

1) Upgrade prior to the final release being made available (e.g. using Feisty now when it releases in April)
2) Upgrade using a method that may well have been appropriate for Debian, but has been documented as
problematic under Ubuntu (again, RTFM). (e.g. using apt-get dist-upgrade rather than update-manager)
3) Upgrade a machine that has had poorly supported packages from suspect 3rd parties (e.g. a system which has
had automatix installed on it)
4) Upgrade and end up with a broken machine which they cant fix on their own, don't bother asking for
help, and then spend the next few months bitching about how Ubuntu doesn't work.
5) Upgrade a machine that has binary blobs which were installed using a method other than the Ubuntu
recommended one. (e.g. Nvidia driver from nvidia.com rather than the package from the repo)

> It does seem to me thought that
> ubuntu is no longer a 'derived from debian' distro but a fork of
> Debian with largely incompatible repositories.
>

Just after *every* *single* Ubuntu release, they take the packages that are currently in Debian
Unstable and merge them into the Ubuntu repository for the *next* release. This means that just after a
release the Ubuntu repo (for the next release) is almost identical to Debian. It then diverges as patches are
applied to Ubuntu (which *are* passed back to Debian but may or may not be accepted into Debian) so that just
*before* an Ubuntu release Ubuntu looks different to Debian, but then the process starts again and Ubuntu
aligns itself with Debian Unstable again and the process starts all over.

So Ubuntu is in a near constant state of zig-zag-ing between those states of "fork" and "non-fork" every 6
months.

Do all the other debian based distros (Knoppix, Linspire (was - now Ubuntu based), Mepis etc) which have their
own repositories fall into your "fork and incompatible" blanket category?

Cheers,
Al.