[PLUG] Ubuntu 14.04.1 released

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Sat Jul 26 13:12:44 UTC 2014


On Fri, 25 Jul 2014, John Jason Jordan wrote:

> I have looked longingly at distros that use a rolling release, because I
> agree that periodic dist-upgrades are a pain. But none of them offer the
> ease of use, the presence in the marketplace, or the great community
> resources of Ubuntu.

John,

   Now you've confused me: do you use the computer for your work/schooling or
as a end it itself?  Nowadays it's a safe bet that all distributions will
run the applications you need and want and support the external hardware you
have sitting around.

   What's ease of use? Germane to using the system or maintaining the system?
For the latter just about all window managers and desktop enviornments run
on every distribution. For maintaining the system -- including keeping it
secure -- there are probably more than the three approaches of which I know:
.prm, .deb, and .tgz. You've switched distributions a few times but haven't
explained why in terms of what you are seeking.

   In 2003 I got tired of the distribution (and even application) upgrade
process with Red Hat. I was aware for the 6 years I had been using it that
it was bleeding-edge, and I was spilling my blood finding all the
dependencies needed that were not already installed. Among the reasons I
switchd to Slackware is that Pat and team stay far back from the bleeding
edge, a philosophy that makes for stable systems (except for some of the
flakyness I accidently introduce in my systems here). When a package is
patched to remove identified vulnerabilities it can be upgraded manually
(what I used to do) or automagically via the slackpkg (and slackpkg+
scripts). Only the installed packages are shown so there are no dependency
issues. Now and then the entire distribution is upgraded. It does
_everything_ I need the computers to run.

   Presence in the marketplace? What has this to do with your using your
computers as a means to an end? If this is important, perhaps you should
take Ed's suggestion in his reply to this thread and switch to Slackware;
it is, after all, the oldest continuously-available distribution, It's been
present in the 'marketplace' for many, many years.

   Community resources? With mail lists, Web fora, and IRC channels I suspect
that all distributions have equal support from their community of users.
Take a look at the list of distribution-specific fora on linuxquestions.org.

   In my opinion, It all comes down to whether the computer is a means to an
end or an end in itself. But, I can tell you from our short experiences with
xubuntu versions on portables here that it was more of a hassle trying to
work with them than with my preferred distribution. YMMV.

Rich



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