Ubuntu Strikes Out on Its Own Again

Ugh,... This could mean the end of Ubuntu... If they deviate from Debian package management, it will certainly fragment the user base... I for one would not endorse it. I would embrace alien style apps to convert Ubuntu packages to debian before I would switch...

Sometimes I wish the people at Canonical would just say what they mean. There is nothing stopping people from building .deb packages with no dependencies. What this is really about is to create a way to make extremely simple self contained 'apps' for Ubuntu mobile devices, like apps for iOS and Android. For any other goal this would be extremely unnecessary and a complete waste of time. As it is, I can't help but wonder if this is the best way to do it. There might be a way that they could incorporate what they need into the current package management system.

I would agree with JaseP while waving goodbye to Ubuntu.

I waved goodbye to Ubuntu when 12.04 came out with Unity. I'm still running 10.04 on my laptop, but expect to be replacing it with Debian when I have time (since 10.04 is no longer supported),

@ jdixon

And you haven't tried Linux Mint or LXMDE (the Debian based edition) with MATE (a vibrantly developed, direct fork of Gnome 2.x) because why???

> And you haven't tried Linux Mint or LXMDE...

I've tried both Mint, and LMDE, though not recently. Neither has any real advantages over Debian for me. I haven't bothered with Mate because I prefer XFCE to Gnome anyway. I think it's a good distro, just not for me.

I don't think Ubuntu is going away. Canonical is increasingly successful at getting Ubuntu preloaded on systems and that is the direction the company/distro is going. However, Ubuntu will be much less popular in the Linux community.

"I liked you before you sold out..."

Linux Mint has been doing a great job of not following Ubuntu when it makes these crazy changes, yet still carrying forward many of the compatibility improvements. Those compatibility improvements seem to be diminishing as the Linux Kernel matures.

It's a great way to get away from Ubuntu for Linux noobs (I'll include myself in that) that don't want a stiff learning curve.

Quoting:Linux Mint has been doing a great job of not following Ubuntu when it makes these crazy changes, yet still carrying forward many of the compatibility improvements.

True enough, but they must be feeling the pressure. Witness their decision a few months ago to drop the XFCE and KDE versions of LMDE. I found that decision extremely disappointing. Cinnamon is interesting, novel, and very promising. But, it just isn't there yet. And with LMDE on the slow train, the updates to Cinnamon are always lagging, often painfully so.

If memory serves me, didn't Mint announce recently they would be moving to a Debian base? I thought I read that somewhere.

They do have a separate Debian edition, if that is what you saw.

> Linux Mint has been doing a great job of not following Ubuntu when it makes these crazy changes

Personally, I'm happy with Mint with Mate based on Ubuntu because it is pretty much a continuation of Ubuntu as it was which suits me fine. However, it's only a matter of time before the gap gets too wide for Mint to be able to practically maintain it. Hopefully that will be a while yet.

We use it at home because I didn't want the family to have to learn a different environment. What we have at the moment is just fine and, apart from updates to apps, the kernel and core libs, I can't see any reason why I would want to change.