for the Linux experts, WINE problem

[caravel]

First of all I am comparing release versions. Thus the unstable branch of Debian is somewhat irrelevant; yes: Debian Sid is usually more up to date than anything. It's closest analogy is Fedora Rawhide. And more or less famously: the question of “how do you run it?”, is answered with “you don't” [that is the Debian wiki, not me]. These are not real distributions: these are dumping grounds for new code to be tested.

Sorry but no, Sid is actually a working, downloadable distro that is actually surprisingly stable. You may need to actually install and use a Sid system before you can make a fair assessment. I would guess from the above that perhaps you haven't? If not then I highly recommend it. In Debian terms "releases" are when the "freeze" occurs and the current testing branch goes stable and the previous stable is move to old-stable. most Debian users don't actually use stable on their desktops - they use either Sid or Squeeze or a combination of the two (this is where a part of the concept of Ubuntu originally came from).

Now, when it comes to *release* (supposedly: *stable*) versions: Ubuntu, or at least, Kubuntu is certainly more up to date than Debian Squeeze is. When I had KDE 4.4.2 on Kubuntu, I'd have KDE 4.3.4 on Squeeze (testing). KDE 4.3.4 was 9.10 material for Ubuntu. As I said: Ubuntu is in between Squeeze (testing) and Sid (unstable), with the early alpha being mostly Sid and the release being closer to Debian testing.

The reason Kubuntu is more 'up to date', is because it's not stable, thoroughly tested software and Ubuntu are known for pushing through untested software before it's ready (believe me I know). Yes you're getting something 'newer', but you're also getting something that's far more likely to break - and break it does.

KDE 4.4 should be in Sid soon - it wasn't last time I checked (still 4.3.5 I think?). Last I heard they were holding off due to the problems most other distros were having with it. Most of those problems have been ironed out now. It gets released "when it's ready".

Debian Stable is used extensively for servers, including webservers of course where security patching and stability is a must. If you've ever tried Stable, you'll know that as a desktop it's also rock solid and dependable. As I've touched on before, backports are the best thing about Lenny. You can get most of the latest packages from Sid and Squeeze and put together a decent desktop with most if not all of the packages that you want. Mrs Asai's PC runs Lenny with backports and is nothing but dependable. I'm toying with the idea of upgrading it to squeeze though.

The proprietary ways bit comes from a lot of `fun' with ndiswrapper & fglrx, including but not limited to unrecoverable installations. YMMV. The bit about manpages is probably clarified with a simple `man xorg.conf'. Similarly, polkit/policykit have man page entries for their configuration as well IIRC. Of course, you do not have to configure your system. But my point is: if you don't want to do the configuration dance then maybe Ubuntu is not such a bad option -- it comes with mostly sensible defaults and a considerable later crop of software out-of-the-box.

I've never had an "unrecoverable installation" from either fglrx and certainly not ndiswrapper either. If fglrx causes hard lock up, it's usually because you installed an fglrx module that wasn't built for your specific kernel. This is actually the circus that has happened a few times with Ubuntu at dist-upgrade time. In fact with any proprietary closed source drivers it's pretty much unavoidable.

The man page for xorg.conf is called 'documentation'. It's a config file and thus the man page needs to be extensive. These days in most cases you can get away without an xorg.conf anyway.

Ubuntu (LTS or not) does not intentionally receive any update that `breaks' the system in the way you mention it. Have you actually *used* Ubuntu? I ask because if you had used it you would know that the Ubuntu repositories are most definitely not the Debian repositories, that you should not even attempt to mix the two (barring some very specific apt.get wizardry), and that there is such a thing as a “Debian Import Freeze” and it is before the first alpha is released. You will, therefore, never get your updates directly from Debian Sid or testing if you run a release version of Ubuntu; and Ubuntu LTS means that you get updates on your software for a longer period. Also LTS releases are based on LTS kernels which typically means the kernel of (next) RHEL. In casu 10.04 ships with 2.6.32 for that reason.

I've used Ubuntu on and off since 6.06LTS right up to 9.04 where I gave up and moved on to better things. 6.06 was the one I stuck with for the longest. That was a decent distro back in it's day. It's later on that it all went very pear shaped.

Yes I'm aware that the Ubuntu and Debian repos are not the same - but thanks for the info. I did not suggest mixing Ubuntu repos, that would be insane, I was talking strictly about Debian. You would not need "apt-get" wizardry" (or aptitude wizardry even) to mix repositories in Debian by the way. Mostly it depends on how you set up your sources.list. Though there are more elaborate ways to go about it yes.

The latest 'stable' kernel is 2.6.33-3 according to kernel.org. Sid and Squeeze uses a stock 2.6.32, but there is a 2.6.33-1 currently in the experimental repo which has some advantanges where the xorg radeon driver, DRI and KMS are concerned - among others. 'buntu 10.04 LTS also uses a build of 2.6.32. So kernel wise they're the same.

I think the main problem here is the myth "debian is difficult" or "debian is out of date" or "debian does not play well with proprietary software". You need to actually try it out properly before coming to those conclusions. If then you still think "tried Debian preferred Ubuntu", that's up to you of course.