Ubuntu, Debian, or BSD?

samantha — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 08:45:00 -0600

Call me fickle - I've been running Ubuntu since the end of April and I'm dreadfully bored with it. Yes, I'm on Gutsy, using the Gutsy-proposed packages and all. I'm once again contemplating moving over to a different distro.

I started out years and years ago, with RedHat Linux. I believe it may have been RedHat 5, but I can't quite recall. Then, I took a break for a while. Eventually, I ran a dual boot with Fedora. Then, I switched over to Mandrake (before it was Mandriva). Or, it could have been the other way around. In any case, I wasn't 'learning enough' and so I decided - wtf, and I installed Gentoo. And, boy - did I learn. After running Gentoo for a while, I moved to Gentoo unstable. ~x86, baby. Once I stopped consistently breaking my system, things were rolling along fine.

Then one day, I broke my system. In a really big, and I do mean BIG way. So, I decided again - wtf, let's see what this Ubuntu is like. I haven't really had any troubles with Ubuntu. It's simple and easy and relatively stable. The biggest issues I had were when I upgraded from Feisty to Gutsy. And even that wasn't that much of a big deal.

But, the thing is, I'm bored again. I'd love a distro that will challenge me - not necessarily as much as Gentoo challenged me, but c'mon, more than Ubuntu is challenging me.

So, I'm contemplating making the switch over to Debian (which seems a little more advanced than Ubuntu) or possibly FreeBSD (which, I know is a different beast). I also use Slackware based distros on some baby machines I have, but I'm not sure if I want to go that route.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Unlike most of my distribution-switching decisions, I'm trying to take my time and not act out of impulsiveness. I'm very impulsive when it comes to changing my system.

I'm leaning more towards moving over to Debian, although I may consider just keeping things simple and going to Ubuntu's Hardy Heron while it's still in Alpha.

In any case, we'll see - I have learned over the years not to start anything like this towards the end of the weekend. We'll see if I have the patience to actually put what I've learned into practice.

mindful iterations: Ubuntu, Debian, or BSD?

Ubuntu, Debian, or BSD?