Debian vs Ubuntu

11 Aug 2007

For a while now I've been using Ubuntu as my Linux distro of choice. On Monday I have to reinstall one of the Ubuntu servers at work, so I thought I'd have a look at Debian this weekend, to see if it would be better. I had a look for Debian vs Ubuntu posts online, but didn't find anything conclusive. So I went ahead and installed it on my laptop...

I went for the DVD option, which I found on a Virgin Media mirror (my ISP, so I downloaded it at about 1.5MB/sec. ) It took a few attempts to burn it - first my Windows laptop seems to fail to burn at anything more than 2x, then I found you have to specify some extra options to get it to burn correctly. Instead I went for the easy option and installed K3B on the Ubuntu laptop and connected my external DVD burner.

Next step: Reboot and install (after backing up my files of course ). The only problem I had with the installer is that if you press Escape to go to the main menu, it seems to switch to a more advanced mode - forcing me to manually configure the partitions instead of offering to do them automatically.

OK so after installing I fire up Terminal and run gVim. It's not installed so I do apt-get update; apt-get install gvim and find it's not available. Now I've used Ubuntu for long enough to know how to fix that:

/etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://debian.virginmedia.com/ etch main contrib non-free
deb-src http://debian.virginmedia.com/ etch main contrib non-free

... but unlike in Ubuntu I had to figure that out for myself - it wasn't already there, wasn't available in Synaptic and wasn't explicitly given on the Debian web site. Nothing I can't handle, but annoying all the same.

I also had to take a moment to modify the sudo configuration to let me use it - it doesn't let me by default, unlike Ubuntu. (I still prefer using sudo with the root password to su.)

Next I look for Firefox. Now that I have APT configured I can do apt-get install firefox, so I do. Then I look for Firefox on the Applications menu but can't find it. So I type firefox and up pops Iceweasel. Wikipedia explains it's just a rebranded Firefox... but everyone at work is already used to using Firefox!

But it's not all bad of course. Many things are just the same in fact... and the default colours are much nicer! I think I'll stick with Ubuntu on my computers and the XDMCP server for now, but I'd probably go for Debian on the web/database servers due to the extensive testing I've read about.

Update (23 Aug 2007)

Lamby posted a reply on his blog about the security of sudo in Ubuntu, and suggested using the smaller netinst Debian images rather than the full DVD images.

Update (21 Apr 2008)

Anonymous pointed out that Debian is much better in terms of portability. For example you can run Debian on a PowerPC-based Mac (which I actually do now, using my old Mac Mini).

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