[SlugLUG] Debian As A Server

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Rohan Sheth (rohan at rohan.ws):

> I really like Debian because I have been using the stable branch on a
> number of machines around here and have never had any problems.  But
> using Debian as a desktop does cause it to suffer from politics and
> such.

One of the biggest underlying reasons for the creation of Ubuntu (in its
sundry flavours, including Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, and
Ubuntu-Server) was certain nagging problems with Debian on the desktop:

1.  Because you want near-edge packages, Debian-stable is out, which
    means you need -testing optionally with some admixture of -unstable.
2.  But that raised, at the time, the aforementioned issue of the 
    Security Team not yet offering _fully automated_ coverage.
3.  Also, the quarantining script that populates packages newly arrived
    packages in -unstable into -testing was in no way guaranteed to 
    approve all related packages in (say) a KDE or GNOME suite at the
    same time.
4.  Also, because of the enormous difficulty of maintaining quality
    and functionality across _13_ CPU architectures, some of them 
    incredibly ancient, slow, and rare, the project's progress sometimes 
    tended to get snagged on one of those platform's ideosyncratic 
    breakages.  This also slows down migrations that are universally 
    agreed to be desirable but must be done carefully, such as from
    XFree86 to X.org.  (Ignorant people sometimes blame these delays
    on "politics", in error.)
5.  Many people were discomfited by the continuously-progressing nature
    of -testing and -unstable, being more accustomed to distros with
    (allegedly) "stable" software selections over 2-3 year periods -- 
    even though the former sort of regime actually works better for 
    everything other than fragile and dodgy binary-only proprietary
    software.

Ubuntu addressed (and addresses) those concerns by:

1.  Releasing for three CPU archictures only (i386, AMD64, PowerPC).
2.  Keeping suites of KDE, GNOME, and Xfce+apps stable over each
    branch's lifetime.
3.  Having defined periodic releases of ensembles that are otherwise
    extremely similar to testing/unstable.
4.  Having security coverage and paid (optional) support for those
    releases during planned lifetimes for each.

Neither Debian nor Ubuntu (nor Gentoo, either) includes in its official
collections software that may not be lawfully redistributed, such as
proprietary codecs, etc.  However, those are available from third-party
package sources.