Debian: Unrelenting Quality

I have mentioned before that I chose to cover Lubuntu because Dan at PPC Luddite did such an amazing job writing about Debian.  I don't like to leave good software unwritten about but if Lubuntu is good then Debian is great.  I can no longer contain my unrelenting love for Debian and it's unrelenting quality standards for it's software and anything they package with it.

Debian is the poster child for what software standards should be, which is why so many distros are based on it.  All the Ubuntu's, Mint, Crunchbang and Finnix are examples just off the top of my head.  Debian have been setting the benchmark for quality reliable code since the mid 90's and continue to do so today.  In 20 years there have only been 7 stable releases.  It's because when they release a stable build they truly stand behind that.  The gap between 6 and 7 was actually quite short by their standards.  The project actually has about 1000 official developers overall.


This is pretty much how Debian developers operate:

1. Test
2. Test some more
3. Test some more
4. Test some more
5. Test some more
6. Check everything over again and again then test some more
7. Test some more
8. Test one last time just to be really really certain.


While these practices keep the stable build a good mile from the bleeding edge, the end result is stable, secure, never fail you code.  There is a reason Debian is usually a top choice for servers.   If you really desire the bleeding edge kernel and default apps then you can simply install Debian testing.  I honestly have more faith in their testing builds than the finals of pretty much every other distro.

Debian PowerPC is also about the last Linux distro with official support on the architecture still and no signs of it ever stopping. Another thing Debain PowerPC does is allow apt to work perfectly.  In my experiences the Ubuntu's and other distros mess this up at some level.  As someone who prefers some command line on a daily basis this is a big selling point for me and I know it is for Dr.Dave also. 

I have been doing a lot of playing around and testing the newest stable release of Wheezy (7.1 currently) and several different GUI.  The memory usage difference between the various environments is quite significant.
 
Here are the memory usage totals for each GUI after simply logging in and with nothing else running.


GNOME 3 - 188 MB

XFCE - 167 MB

Openbox - 101 MB (a bit higher than usual)

Fluxbox - 93 MB

LXDE - 81 MB

The system has 1.5 GB (1536 MB) RAM


LXDE is the reining champ and is so much easier to use for Linux newbs than Openbox or Fluxbox, which use more memory.  I started with the Debian LXDE image and then installed the other enviroments.  LXDE, Fluxbox and Openbox fly while GNOME and XFCE sputter a bit on my G4 1 GHz Sawtooth testing system.  GNOME and XFCE are still very usable but they simply can't compare performance-wise.  There is also a KDE offering but I have never used it with Deb7.  While KDE is very capable it's one of the most bloated GUI.  It's almost as bad as Unity in terms of system resource consumption.

I will be writing a lot more about Debian 7 soon but I wanted to get out some early observations.


A couple screens:

Debian 7 LXDE

Debian 7 XFCE


Download Debian PowerPC:

LXDE

XFCE

GNOME 

KDE

Netinstall


It's good.  It's great.  It's all it should be.  It's all any OS should be.  It's free in every sense.

I put Debian on equal ground with BSD.  It's one of only 3 Linux distros I would say that about.  The other two would be Arch and Gentoo but even they can't touch Debian in my mind.

The twitter situation

Using twitter the last few days has been moderately interesting but for the most part I have been reminded why I never used my personal account.  I'm pretty much officially over Twitter (again) already.

Another thing of note is that the amount of visitors we get is at least 300-500 unique ip hits per day yet we only have gotten 21 followers in the first week.  This tells me that the regular readers here are pretty much as crotchety about social networking as I am.  After all, it does take a specific kind of person to appreciate the angle this blog comes from.  People who think like the Dr. and myself have no time for trends of any type.  While Twitter is one of the better parts of the social networking world, it's still part of a culture that I really cannot relate to.

I wrote at the end of the previous blog post "Lets see how Twitter and this blog mix".  It turns out we don't mix.

I can't speak for Dr. Dave but I am over Twitter already.  I may post something now and then or we may just agree to delete the account.

All I really care to spend free tech time on is writing for this blog and using Linux more.  That is what I shall continue doing.

I tried...  140 characters just isn't for me.  Far too limiting and I also tend to hate popular things by default.

This blog will not make any other attempts at social networking.  All that matters is the forward motion of PowerPC and you can get that right here.


Side note

Debian 7 LXDE is amazingly good BTW.  The stable release was introduced in the recent past.  It puts Lubuntu to shame in terms of pure functionality and reliability.  Debian is not as bleeding edge with the kernel and default app versions as Lubuntu is but it's as rock solid as you can get. 

More on that soon.

Join us on Twitter

I have never been much of a social network type person and neither is Dr.Dave.  Twitter is the one social network I can tolerate and I have had a personal account there for about 3 years but almost never use it.  I figured it was time for an official PowerPC Liberation Twitter account.  This will be a place where the two of us can share random thoughts or things of interest.  It can help fill the gaps between articles much better that way.  I created the account yesterday so please come and join us if you enjoy this blog.

@ppcliberation 

I would have preferred @powerpcliberation but it's too many characters.


When it comes to writing and reading tweets I really prefer to use a client instead of the site.  The page is very java script heavy and slow these days.  There is also the mobile Twitter page found here which is much faster but I still prefer a client.

My client of choice the last couple years is YoruFukurou and I highly recommend it to PowerPC users on Leopard.  The newest builds are Intel only so you will need 1.65 which you can download here.


 Lets see how Twitter and this blog mix.