[ale] Canonical makes Apple look so good...

[Don Lachlan]

On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 7:04 PM, Preston Boyington
<preston.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> Pat Regan wrote:
> <snipped>
>> I ran exclusively Debian from the late nineties up until Ubuntu 5.04 or
>> 5.10.  For my own purposes Ubuntu has meant "Debian with a 6 month
>> release schedule."
>> Am I the only one running Ubuntu for this reason?
> I briefly swapped from Debian to Ubuntu a few years ago.  I appreciated
> how easy it was and liked many of the things Ubuntu offered me
> initially.  After a while I began to be annoyed by little things and
> eventually went back to Debian.

I've tried Ubuntu off and on since they first released. It's what I've
recommended to friends as a first Linux distro and I'm writing this on
a (borrowed) laptop running Ubuntu.

But for my own systems, I run Debian. One of the reasons I've stuck
with Debian is I've found the project is most consistent with what I
think free software should be and what it doesn't have to be. I'm ok
waiting an extra six months (or 18 months) for a feature to be
implemented in a free, unencumbered way. I'm ok not using features
which require me to surrender rights or privileges to someone else.
Until the last year or so, I thought Ubuntu shared that belief.

Benjamin Mako Hill wrote an essay[0] for the FSF about the arguments
for "free software" versus "open source", where the latter argues that
it is better because of the quality of code. For me, free software is
better because it's free, not because of features or quality.

On quality and features, Ubuntu often makes a better desktop. On being
free, Canonical keeps moving itself farther and farther away, as
Novell and (especially) RedHat have done. Releasing code under GPL
isn't enough.

I get why people use Ubuntu. For a long time, I've tried to like it -
but too many problems, too many conflicts. And now, Canonical is
trying to redefine what "free" means.

I get it. I get why people run OSX. Or Windows. I get why people
choose lots of things I wouldn't. Sure, opinions vary. But I think
people have to reconsider why they're running GNU/Linux, and if Ubuntu
still meets those standards.

-Lachlan

[0] http://mako.cc/writing/hill-when_free_software_isnt_better.html