[PLUG] ubuntu or debian

[Keith Lofstrom]

>    I hate the mount command (John Jason Jordan)

If I correctly understood that thread, John's "problem"
is that mount and df and other commands are designed for
"real" file systems, not ubuntu snaps, which Canonical
pretends are file systems, spewing a crap-ton of line
noise when querying.

I (and presumably John) just want mount and df to display
and manage the file systems we are responsible for, not
distribution abstractions that Canonical wants to control,
and seemingly remove from end user control.  Perhaps there
is a command line switch that snips out the snaps, and I
can alias /usr/local/bin commands to those.

John, like me, lives on the command line, writing words,
computing numbers ... not videos, not games, not graphical
gestures.

I am already migrating from RedHat/IBM to Ubuntu-Mate to
avoid distro churn and the end of long term support (LTS).

Debian seems to be extending towards community-supported
and community-managed long-term support, while Ubuntu
seems to be devolving towards an IBM/Redhat-like walled
garden.  Out of the frying pan, into the plasma torch?

Perhaps I should re-migrate from Mate-Ubuntu-LTS to
Mate-Debian LTS.  AFAIKS, the main thing I lose is easy
access to proprietary hardware drivers ... though if I
can buy hardware with open drivers (ditch the nVidia
cards, purchase AMD/Radeon?), I can manage "nuts and
volts) rather than dependencies and paywalls.  

A related issue is my fondness for my older "big pixel"
3x4 Thinkpad laptops with trackpoint, though not their
ancient 4 GB memory limit.  I have a lifetime supply. 
4 GB of RAM is constraining, but less so with an SSD
"hard drive" and rapid swap.  Screens?  I have some
1536x2048 screens for my largest T60 Thinkpads, and
tools to reprogram the BIOS to accept them. 

So - get out your crystal balls, and help me decide which
distro (Ubuntu, Debian) to use for the next decade. 
Which distro is most likely to enable new design and
engineering/science/math apps, friendliest to occasional
personal hardware and software hacks, least likely to
migrate from free to prison-ware? 

For me, a computer should be "just a tool".  The more
they resemble my Swedish great-grandfather's 1880's
flat-blade screwdriver (which has turned hundreds of
thousands of screws, and I still use), the better.

Keith L.

P.S.  Some PLUGgers use other distros like Rocky or
Slackware or BSD derivatives, and more power to them.
But do me a favor and discuss the ubuntu/debian binary
choice for now.  My first "distro" (not counting PDP-8
boot loader and paper tape) was BSD 3 at UC Berkeley,
many decades ago; been there, done that.

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com