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Why I'm running boring ol' Debian Lenny, Part 1
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Comments (4)
I've tried all the major distros, and a few of the lesser distros, and in the end nothing works better as an all-purpose OS than debian Lenny. I'm running it on my two desktop PCs, a netbook, and on my media center PC. The latter two are running a newer kernel (from testing) because I needed a network driver and an audio driver, respectively, that were not available in the Lenny kernel. Other than that, all systems are stock Lenny.
It all comes down to what you as a user and your hardware are comfortable with. Some prefer Slackware, other Red Hat, Fedora, Suse, Mandriva, or even a BSD.
I've been back and forth with Debian. With the exception of my now-ancient Sparcstation 20 (Debian abandoned 32-bit Sparc long ago), everything I have can run Debian.
I've spent a lot of time running Ubuntu, a bit less in OpenBSD, and smatterings in CentOS, Puppy and PCLinuxOS (the 2007 vintage).
I bet Ubuntu 8.04 LTS deals better with my RT73-driven USB WiFi stick that it did six months ago, so that would be a good alternative.
But I already had this laptop with Lenny installed on it, so that kind of spoke to me. The disk is only 20 GB, which for me isn't enough for a good dual-boot.
And even though I've migrated configurations from OpenBSD to Ubuntu and now to Debian, it's not something I'm terribly fond of doing. It's all "easy" once you know how to do it. I've got Thunderbird and Firefox done, but I haven't figured out how to bring my Rhythmbox configuration from Ubuntu to Debian. Like many GNOME-ish apps, the documentation is barely there.
I'm enjoying Lenny and the speed bump I'm getting vs. stock Ubuntu. Most of my problems have been resolved, and the whole point of this switch is that I need to do my work and not spend time fixing stuff every time there's a kernel or xorg update.
Again, it's all about what works in your situation. And with software continually "improving," but my hardware staying the same, what works appears to be in flux. Lenny, like CentOS if I had chosen it, will buy me time.
I've been back and forth with Debian. With the exception of my now-ancient Sparcstation 20 (Debian abandoned 32-bit Sparc long ago), everything I have can run Debian.
I've spent a lot of time running Ubuntu, a bit less in OpenBSD, and smatterings in CentOS, Puppy and PCLinuxOS (the 2007 vintage).
I bet Ubuntu 8.04 LTS deals better with my RT73-driven USB WiFi stick that it did six months ago, so that would be a good alternative.
But I already had this laptop with Lenny installed on it, so that kind of spoke to me. The disk is only 20 GB, which for me isn't enough for a good dual-boot.
And even though I've migrated configurations from OpenBSD to Ubuntu and now to Debian, it's not something I'm terribly fond of doing. It's all "easy" once you know how to do it. I've got Thunderbird and Firefox done, but I haven't figured out how to bring my Rhythmbox configuration from Ubuntu to Debian. Like many GNOME-ish apps, the documentation is barely there.
I'm enjoying Lenny and the speed bump I'm getting vs. stock Ubuntu. Most of my problems have been resolved, and the whole point of this switch is that I need to do my work and not spend time fixing stuff every time there's a kernel or xorg update.
Again, it's all about what works in your situation. And with software continually "improving," but my hardware staying the same, what works appears to be in flux. Lenny, like CentOS if I had chosen it, will buy me time.
Same here. My specific reason for staying with Lenny rather than continuing with Debian Unstable was the change to KDE4.
As S.R. mentions, it's buying time for other things to settle down.
I'm not seeing problems with stale software either. That's interesting, since most people who object to a "stable" distribution point to older software as a major problem. Huh, just not seeing it.
As S.R. mentions, it's buying time for other things to settle down.
I'm not seeing problems with stale software either. That's interesting, since most people who object to a "stable" distribution point to older software as a major problem. Huh, just not seeing it.
I've been worried about "going back" to earlier versions of some apps. But for the most part I haven't had a problem. And if I do, there are Backports or .deb packages.
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