[Techtalk] What distro?

L J L lists at laubenheimer.net
Sat Oct 16 08:40:46 UTC 2010


Little Girl wrote:
> Hey there,
> 
> L J L wrote:
> 
>> I hated both Ubuntu and Kubuntu, even though I'm a Debian fan.
>> Anything that tries to tell me how my desktop will be set up, and
>> tries to hide the controls from me, can stay off of my systems.
> 
> What desktop settings are not available, and which controls are
> hidden?

I think the general control panel was just plain gone, and various other 
desktop controls required root access to change.

> I notice that my son's current Ubuntu release doesn't have a Run
> command shortcut in the menu. He also isn't offered one there. He can
> run it as a widget in his bar, but that's not the same, and would really bother me. I've been using the Run command from the menu
> for *decades*, and I don't want to give that up. Older releases of
> Ubuntu had it in the menu. Someone must have actually made the
> executive decision to remove it!

That was on of the other things that some fool decided that the user had 
no need of.

>> I run plain Debian, although for a quick and dirty install I'll
>> start with Knoppix and migrate.
> 
> My reason for asking is that I'm behind in my release (Kubuntu 8.04
> with my beloved KDE 3) and I'm going to be upgrading to the current
> Ubuntu release soon (because I don't like the new KDE4). But if
> there's a compelling reason or reasons to switch to Debian instead,
> maybe I should do that. (:

Compelling?  Not sure - if you like Kubuntu.  But I found it 
frustrating, and I'm a long time Debian and Linux user.  It was 
supposedly more user friendly, but it felt more like a Windows wannabe.

The things against Debian proper are the slower release cycle and the 
silly tiff they have with Mozilla about the FireFox name and branding. 
The upside is the slower release cycle means less frequent radical 
upgrades, and they don't try to "fix" the UI to elimiate the knobs.

YMMV, of course.  There may be a Debian Live CD available, other than 
Knoppix, I don't know off the top of my head.

ljl


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