Ubuntu and Kubuntu vs. Mepis

[Justin Dugger]

I'm currently running Ubuntu Breezy.  It's fantastically simple to set
up a desktop environment with, because they simply defined a virtual
package "ubuntu-desktop" that pulls in a fair amount of tools you'd
want. Of all the Debian based distros, I think this is one  most
likely to succeed in the long term, except perhaps Debian itself.

Theres a repo in Ubuntu called universe that you might be interested
in. Universe is a repo for porting debian unstable packages by people
other than ubuntu developers.  There's a group called Masters of the
Universe that manage it and keep it semi working. Its possible that
you'll still run into apt-pin situations should you decide that the
MotU is too slow, but I havent had the need to try to run around
universe yet.

And since I you've asked about them, I'll also explain that multiverse
is the set of packages typically found in debian's non-free, plus some
they won't even distribute in there. Basically universe is the extras
that nobody from ubuntu spent time porting and bringing into official
"our support contracts require this be in main" repo. I don't believe
security-updates affects main, although usually the motu try to keep
on top of that. And multiverse is the closed source stuff like mplayer
and acroreader etc that's useful but may not be legal or encouraged.

Ive gone through two upgrades of Ubuntu thus far, with minimal
troubles.  Yes, there was a root password leak that wasn't caught
until lately.  However, it didnt affect me because the problem was in
one of the newer installers.  I'd suggest waiting perhaps a day or a
week before upgrading.  That way the traffic on the mirrors dies down,
and the "oh shit" bugs are found.  I'm told newer versions of Ubuntu
are going to include an improved synaptic with an "upgrade distro"
button, so you can move from Breezy to Dapper, or Dapper to Dapper+1.

After the Sarge debacle, Ubuntu did a bang up job of pressuring Debian
to make strides of improvement.  Debian's always prided itself on
being a jack of all trades and flexible -- Ubuntu stole a collection
of Debian Developers and demonstrated that focusing on a single area
(PC desktops) is just as valid and valuable.

Justin Dugger

On 4/3/06, Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO <brian.kelsay at kcc.usda.gov> wrote:
> Who in our group is actually using these distros?   I'm interested in
> the ease of updating and stability after doing so compared to Mepis, HDD
> installed Knoppix and regular Debian or any other Debian-based distro.
>
> I've tried tons of LiveCDs, used Mepis quite a bit and never had success
> with plain old Debian installing as a desktop.  I like Mepis out of the
> box, though like any distro you find little bits that don't work or you
> don't like.  Mepis is switching to the Ubuntu repositories with the next
> release, in order to get more stable updates.
>
> The point of this is, I still consider myself a Mepis user, but I'm
> concerned about the quality of the Ubuntu repos if I stick with it.
> Also, if I were to switch to Kubuntu, will I run into apt-pin problems
> when I try to add software not included on the distro disks?  That has
> been a problem on Mepis with the Debian unstable repos.  I tried the
> 64-bit Kubuntu last week and it looks great on my newish desktop PC, but
> I also wonder how it will do on a PIII-500 with lots of ram.  An older
> Mepis was OK on it after I turned off the flashing and bouncing
> mouse-busy cursors.   Haven't had the guts to try a newer Mepis or
> anything else on that PC.  I need a Linux with the games working for my
> kids when they are over.
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