[GRLUG] Upgrading Firefox

[John J. Foerch]

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 11:33:18AM -0400, Steve Romanow wrote:
> John J. Foerch wrote:
> >
> > In the course of following this thread, I got to rethinking my personal
> > policy of not recommending Debian to people new to the gnu/linux world.
> > When I installed Debian on my new computer a couple of weeks ago, the
> > process was painless, not complex like the Debian of yesteryear.  I had a
> > couple of hardware issues stemming from the fact that I elected to buy
> > relatively new computer parts, and therefore needed a more current kernel
> > and X.org, but I would have run into those problems with any distro.
> > (And Debian's apt-pinning, though a technically advanced procedure, is a
> > true convenience in this situation.)  So what does the LUG think?  Is
> > there any longer an advantage of Ubuntu over Debian for the novice?
> > Debian has a shining reputation for stability and quality, so maybe
> > Debian is the better "long term investment"?  Inviting some friendly
> > speculation.
> >
> >   
> This is totally opinion:
> 
> As a noob years ago, I found debian's website to be very cold and hard 
> to find useful information.  It does not appear to have changed much since.
> 
> Part of the package that the noob needs is the "what to do when your 
> geek friend has gone home."  One thing Ubuntu has done a pretty good job 
> with is being approachable.
> 
> No distro bats 1000, technical glitches and breakage will occur.  My 
> last failed reboot was actually my only Lenny system :).  The vm 
> appliance shipped with the /dev/hd* drive labels and an apt upgrade 
> changed it to /dev/sd*.  Only took me a bit to fix, but was a surprise.


That's a good point about the Ubuntu website vs. the Debian website.

Another thing that someone pointed out is that Ubuntu has better
out-of-the-box support for non-free hardware drivers.  I hadn't
considered that because I purposely shopped for brands that I knew had
Free drivers available.  The onus is on the consumer to vote with
wallet.

-- 
John Foerch