Back Home, with Debian!

“By the end of 2004, I’d been running Debian ‘testing’ on my
laptop since around early 2003. For almost two years, I’d lived
with periodic instability — including a week in the spring of
2003 when I couldn’t even get X11 started — for the sake of
using a distribution that maximally respected software freedom.

“I’d had no trouble with ‘potato’ for its two year lifespan, but
after 6-8 months of woody, I was backporting far too much and I
couldn’t spare the time for upkeep. Running ‘testing’ was the next
best option, as I could pin myself for 3-6 months at a time on a
particularly stable day and have a de-facto “release”. But, I
slowly was unable to spare the time for even that work, and I was
ready to throw up my hands in surrender.

“At just about that time, a thing called ‘warty’ was released.
I’d already heard about this company, Canonical, as they’d tried
earlier that year to buy a domain name I technically own
(canonical.org), but had long since given over to a group of old
friends. (They of course had no interest in selling such a “hot
property”). This new distribution, Ubuntu, was Debian-based, and
when installed, it “felt” like Debian. Canonical was committed to a
six-month release schedule, so I said to myself: “well, if I have
to ‘go corporate’ again, I might as well go to something that works
like the distribution I prefer”. And so, my five year stint as an
Ubuntu user began.”

Complete
Story