As a hard-core Debian user I was initially quite pleased with Ubuntu, but as time goes on this is fading, for two reasons. First is Debian etch is really quite a nice release (in part no doubt due to things stolen from Ubuntu) and for the first time ever I haven’t upgraded to testing shortly after release. Secondly is the increasing amount of crack going into Ubuntu that turns it from a Debian derivative into a distribution that just uses the same package format. The opaqueness of Ubuquity (no docs, the source location isn’t obvious); lib{pam,nss}-ldap now use a common file, like upstream but unlike Debian, and the README.Debian (another useful file in /usr/share/doc/package) files still reference the Debian names; the change in the way locales are handled; and so on. Sometimes you can fall back to the Debian way, sometimes you can’t, but half these changes aren’t properly documented. Or maybe I just don’t follow Ubuntu development closely enough.

I never learned all the flags of rpm which is possibly why I didn’t like FC2. Now that Core and Extras have merged Fedora is looking more promising, but it doesn’t offer any compelling reason to switch. Particularly not from Debian, where “install once, upgrade forever” is an unofficial release goal.

developers, on the other hand, live and breathe out of their SCMs, a terminal, and a bugs database. this is where fedora gets it right - their target has always been freedom and an on-going moving development tree.

oh well. i do wish ubuntu the best of successes as its gotta be one of the best linux distributions since sliced bread