Bye bye Ubuntu, hello Linux Mint Debian

Bye bye Ubuntu, hello Linux Mint Debian #

After 5 or 6 years of using Ubuntu I am letting it go. Sort of. I felt quite comfortable with it until one or two years ago they moved to Unity and the wind of change began blowing and sooner than later the hurricane warning widespread. With disrespect signals going back and forth you gain no friends. I will not reproduce here the plethora of controversial decisions Canonical has taken but tell you about how I decided the move to Linux Mint Debian.

Lot of users == lot of problems solved earlier #

Seems to be an old truth but being it as old as computing is not usually taken into account by tech savvy people like me, and using Linux in all machines I own and work (from phone to home desktop and work desktop machine) being able to find solution to almost any problem in a breeze is my primary concern, mostly when you spend all you working day atop of a machine programming, reading Internet articles or even e-mail reading. Minimum disruption and short delays for solution search and problem solving is highly desirable. Same thing can be said about security. Is not an admin server concern anymore (should I repeat Hearthbleed bug three times for something horrible to happen?) but being connected to the Internet at all times (at home and at work) makes myself also responsible for my own security, meaning updating to any product safe version as soon as a security alert is widespread, security related configuration changes, etc.

Debian derivative != Ubuntu derivative #

The idea that drive this change, as explained earlier, is to punish Canonical about the wrong decisions taken regarding the Open Source movement. Being said that an Ubuntu based distribution is out of scope

Programming language of choice (am I tied to my old OS?) #

I currently program in Java, Shell Script and some C++ (mainly for fun) and the three of them can be used/programmed in any Linux environment. My current IDE choices are IntelliJ for Java/Shell Scripting and Eclipse for C++ meaning that I’m not tight coupled to any desktop OS. Also I’m a big fan of jEdit. Android OS is a very different kind of animal to talk about. Some time ago I needed to change my aging laptop and being a tech aware boy as I am tried an innovative approach by buying a powerful and extensible tablet with Android that can be used as a desktop and as a tablet, but because of not being able to use neither IntelliJ nor Eclipse (or any other Java program because of SWT or Swing to being ported to Android) I have to abort that lovely project. Poor of me :-(

Hardware performance in the era of commodity hardware #

Unless you need very tight spec about the hardware to use or need an exorbitant quantity of memory, disk capacity, speed or massive CPU usage there’s no need to go further into this point. Anything that I was able to run with Ubuntu, in terms of performance, surely will be able to run also in any other Linux distro. No special requirements here from my side.

VMs and how choosing your OS became easier #

Because I’m in a full production environment can’t take a full time week or so to decide which OS to move to, then using a Virtual Machine was a huge bonus. The basic idea behind this was to install a VM with the candidates OSes and my daily usage apps, trying it for some time (usually a couple of days) and using my core apps to interact with other persons and effectively being able to do my work. I was not in the high risk zone here because of moving into an arena that is based on Linux and Java then have no problems in any of the solutions tested

UI matters, or not ? #

Not for me. I’m not a huge fan of UI beyond its basic usage. Don’t get me wrong I really appreciate all the hard work UI guys put on it but at the moment, to put a well known example, Gnome 3 has no real advantage for me because the way I work. That’s a huge advantage for me because I can stick to Gnome 2 or basic Xfce functionality without any extra suffering. May be I’m missing something about top notch UIs that I’ve not discovered yet (I must confess that I’m delighted about touch screen oriented UIs)

Conclusion #

Ubuntu so long and thanks for all the fish. Long life to Linux Mint Debian distribution.