[conspire] so much for politeness to nick

[Daniel Gimpelevich]

On Sat, 01 Sep 2007 17:16:25 -0700, bruce coston wrote:

> Nick, unless your links say something hidden deeper than I'm willing to
> go, they are not relevant.
> 
> MEPIS did not lightly switch to buntu , specifically they worried about
> code buntu uses that has not passed from experimental into sid. Much of
> debian code testing centers on  automatic promotion dependant on passing
> automated tests run every thursday.

That only applies to unstable->testing, and tends to err on the side of
caution. Debian practically never does anything that some other distro
hasn't done first, so that they may hopefully do it better.

>      I'm not going to check whether code can get to sid from
>      experimental with only automated testing for you.

Cannot happen -- by design.

>      Its rather well known that buntu gets better hd benchmarks because
>      of some code that never got out of debian experimental. Given the

Not sure to which code you're referring, but odds are that it's upstart,
which Nick also mentioned.

>      MANY suspicious disk partition wipe outs and 1 incident that wiped
>      all linux partitions I'm forced to recommend against buntu and stop

Unrelated issue. I'm appalled that anyone who multi-boots so many
GNU/Linux distros would even think of trusting any partitioning method
other than "Manual" in any distro at all.

>      testing them, ~"go buy all new drives that work"  reinforces my
>      view of buntu childishness formed from their long neglect

It took you how long to stop buying Western Digital drives?

>      eventually addressed of the reality that 90%+ of systems ship with
>      PNP enabled. I don't backup daily expecting weekly emergencies.

I assume you're referring to the "PnP OS" option, rather than the
presence of a PnP BIOS. Ubuntu kernels handle this scenario better than
the stock kernels of any distro I've seen. For example, it often makes
Sidux not boot at all.

>      Things go too bad too often when a buntu shares a drive!
>      Suppossedly this won't happen when everybody uses jfs. I'm not

Sadly, this is an area where Ubuntu is a bit behind the curve. Ubuntu
still insists that ext3 is the best default. Other than obvious
partitioning precautions, *buntu goes out of its way to make sure GRUB
plays nice with everything else on the drive. I've never seen any other
distro even come close to this.

>      redoing everyones fs just to accomodate buntu!

Using JFS would be accommodating Linux, not *buntu.

> Most of my awareness that debian testing exists  comes from the fact
> that buntu sucks CRITICAL CODE from there.

Um, how is that a bad thing?

> How many distro do you multi-boot? Do you test on anything but the
> nicest hardware ?

I stopped the multi-boot game and settled on Ubuntu. I still periodically
grab a not-in-immediate-use HD and install something else on it, and never
on the "nicest" hardware. I keep coming back to Ubuntu.

> The article from Warren you cite mentions the software forking from
> debian issue, by sticking with CRITICAL CODE that enhances hd
> performance and wipes linux partitions they also fork away from a large
> segment of the worlds hard drives and/or filesystems.

Major conflation. Please restate.

> By not even bothering with research we know of 2 pieces of low level
> software in buntu from experimental and at least 1 causes data loss,
> thus CRITICAL - all lines of code are not created equal.

The data loss here is user error, end of story.

>      I will definately recommend the MEPIS beta 1 over any and all buntu
>      because its working great doing this among other things. It didn't
>      cause any disk wipes despite sharing with PCBSD etc. BUT do replace
>      k3b with gnome-baker to avoid the visible bug that prevented me
>      from making my backup, immensely preferable over suddenly needing
>      to restore from a backup that may exist.

There's nothing wrong with recommending more than one thing. Also, Calvin
may have been onto something when he recommended gcombust over K3b, rather
than gnome-baker.

> Its reckless when its your drives that don't work out.

It's reckless when you trust software to do what you haven't verified it
to do ahead of time, regardless of what that software is.

> I find the buntu crowd so proud of their choices they lose honesty and
> like to describe it as "TENDENTION" both as dishonesty from excessive
> partisanship and the medical term for an undeveloped fetus.

This may actually be more of that "California" thing that Rick was talking
about...