Thursday, March 23, 2017
Defecting
Defecting
At one point in time I lauded Ubuntu as "the" Linux distro. Over the years since I dropped Windows and adopted Linux as my OS of choice, I have come to learn Ubuntu, love Ubuntu and now walk away from Ubuntu. Despite my once avid fanboy-ism, there have been many developments in Ubuntu that have appeared, all of which starting as recently as release 9.10 "Jaunty Jackalope". Little things, like deviating from the Linux standard notification area applet to the unappealing indicator applet. I cant quite put my finger on it, but Ubuntu is simply not the OS I once fell in love with. Its always had its quirks, like wondering whether or not things like file sharing and wifi are going to work after a distro upgrade when they worked just fine in the previous version, but as Ive stated before I will gladly take an OS with quirks over an OS with viruses any day!
After reading the announcement that Ubuntu will officially be adopting Unity as opposed to Gnome3 with its next release, its hard to say exactly why but that turned out to be the final straw for me. Personally, I am happy with the current version of Gnome and instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water I would prefer to see the current platform developed and perfected. I had high hopes for projects like Nautilus Elementary, but now that it seems as though the gnome desktop is being forcefully thrust upon Netbooks almost exclusively, I find myself thoroughly disappointed all around. I want a real desktop OS. But I digress...
I decided ultimately to part ways with the ever more bloated Ubuntu and go in favor of Debian -- the source. Its tough to say exactly what it is about Debian that I like, or how it differs terribly from its derivative Ubuntu, but after a few minutes of using it, it was like a breath of fresh air, and reminded me of something familiar, the je ne sais quoi that originally drew me to Ubuntu and away from Windows.
Sure, Debian may not get anywhere near the amount of attention, eye candy or bling that Ubuntu does, but I am okay with that. Ive even had to compile a handful of programs from source that are otherwise just a sudo apt-get install away in Ubuntu, but to me thats even more fuel for the fire. Why on Earth would a downstream derivative OS have so many packages and updates available to it that the core, the very foundation that it is built upon does not? It boggles my mind. Personally, I like my system the way it is without any of the Ubuntu particular bloat and non essential add ons. Since my transition to Debian, my computer has become faster, more stable and somehow more enjoyable to use.
Debian is not a system for the faint of heart, nor those who do not know their way around a Linux system, so in those respects I still give Ubuntu kudos. However, there comes a point in a hackers life where he needs to take the training wheels off.
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