[Lazarus] Off-topic: Debian vs Ubuntu

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

Hi,

While following some of the discussion about "FPC and Lazarus on ARM" it 
made me think of a question I wanted to ask any Linux users, and I know 
here are quite a few.

Is it only Ubuntu that cannibalized the Linux run-levels beyond 
recognition, or is the same thing done in Debian too? I have zero 
experience with Debian.

eg:
  * Ubuntu doesn't have the standard run-levels defined like normal
    Linux distros (eg: Slackware, Fedora etc) have.
     - There is no "Multiuser without NFS" - run-level 2
     - No "Full Multiuser mode" console login - run-level 3
     - X11 - run-level 5
    In Ubuntu run-levels 2-5 are all the same thing. F**ken stupid!

  * Ubuntu use something called upstart which seems to have no editor
    or any logic behind controlling what should start when. Run-Levels
    have worked fine for decades, so why did Ubuntu have to break it!


On a side note:
---------------

  [warning: ranting on, so you might want to stop reading here]

In recent weeks I have been taking a look at various Linux distros again 
- something I haven't really done for the last 8 years. Just to see what 
is out there, because I have been using Ubuntu as my sole Linux distro 
since 6.06. Overall, it seems Linux distros are getting worse and worse 
with every release.

   * They can't standardize on a technology. Lets take audio. First
     something else, then OSS, then ALSA, then PulseAudio... what next,
     and in how many months? A technology can never mature under Linux.
   * DBUS, HAL etc is in the same boat as audio. Technology used keeps
     changing every few months, so something totaly different and
     untested.
   * All recent distros seem to have screwed-up audio. How damn difficult
     can it be??? It just works under Mac OS X, Windows, Haiku, OS/2
     etc.. I tried Fedora 14, Ubuntu 10.04... My audio mixer volume
     settings are all set at 100%, yet I can hardly hear anything when
     an application plays sound. This used to work just fine in Ubuntu
     8.04.4, on the exact same system!
   * Switching desktop environments (Gnome -> KDE) on the same system
     gives me totally different audio levels!
   * KDE 4.x is rubbish compared to KDE 3.5 (it's like Vista for Linux)
   * Gnome is getting slower by the minute!
   * X11 seems overall slower than a few year back.
   * Fonts look totally different between KDE, Gnome etc when switching
     desktop environments on the same system. How damn hard can this
     really be as well, to get a consistent end-user experience... after
     all, they all run on the same X11 GUI.
   * Newer distros can now successfully make my P4 3Ghz laptop with 2GB
     memory and a 128MB ATI Radeon video card come to a crawl - with a
     new install! Where are the days when Linux was fast and nippy! Even
     Windows 7 runs faster on that system than Linux.

I'm seriously running out of OS options here. Linux is frustrating the 
hell out of me. Mac OS X doesn't run on my PC system. Windows is not 
something I want to go back to, after experiencing the flexibility that 
Linux had to offer. Haiku has great potential, but still to young for a 
day-to-day work system. Maybe it's time I go back to my typewriter - it 
never crashed on me, and the audio level (clicking sound as you type) 
was at a consistent level even when I changed paper or the ribbon. :-)


Regards,
   - Graeme -

-- 
fpGUI Toolkit - a cross-platform GUI toolkit using Free Pascal
http://fpgui.sourceforge.net/