Ubuntu or Debian?

I am totally new to this. Sorry if my questions seem stupid/naive. First a little background. I have dabbled a little with Ubuntu and have a copy of 12.1 LTE on CD.My hard drive crapped out on my HP laptop. Extra sucks because the fucking windows 7 os was on it. HP support was little to no help. One Indian support person offered to send a new HD with a windows 7 installation disk for $137 but with only a 3 month warranty. But the other one crapped out in 15 months so every 15 months later I'll be doing this all again? I wanted to think about that. When I called back a few days later after deciding to go for it they said they didn't have one but would give me some numbers to call. WTF? Nah. Thanks but no thanks. Since I had already removed the old hard drive to get the numbers I ordered a new smaller one (only 160GB) on Ebay. Only $30 with free shipping. Just screwing around I tried loading the Ubuntu on it even with no hard drive in it. It worked! I just can't save anything. I'm posting this using no hard drive. Coolio.

Firefox that comes with Ubuntu and has a direct link to the Debian os downloading site that must be furnished by the Ubuntu software engineers I imagine. I'm wondering if I should bother downloading a copy of Debian. I have another laptop, I could get it from there. Is Debian even worth getting though? I'm still dealing with the learning curve on Ubuntu. Is that one that different? I'm fine using Ubuntu now. I still need to figure out which anti-virus will work best with Ubuntu. Then different with Debian? Wait...

i use linux mint, so that's what i recommend. it's ubuntu derived and you'd probably like it. hp laptops seem to give the most problems for linux, esp. wifi. so don't be surprised if it doesn't work without a little tweaking. linux mint help chat is great for that.

debian is always a solid choice too.

Chrome is cool too. User interface and mgt tool very much like Suse.

You can try ghost to recover any useful data on the dead drive.

I thought Chrome was Google's browser.

I just removed the old hard drive and destroyed it. If the hard-drive is completely inaccessible, or complete toast, using ghost or any recovery software is impossible. That hard-drive failure thing has happened twice to me long before that computer needed upgrading, which means every 6 months right now, but thanks.

I have read good things and will try Mint sometime. Thanks.

boot sector corruption doesn't mean data isnt still there.

boot sector corruption doesn't mean data isnt still there.

dddaver said:

I thought Chrome was Google's browser.

I just removed the old hard drive and destroyed it. If the hard-drive is completely inaccessible, or complete toast, using ghost or any recovery software is impossible. That hard-drive failure thing has happened twice to me long before that computer needed upgrading, which means every 6 months right now, but thanks.

I have read good things and will try Mint sometime. Thanks.

Click to expand...

Ghost does boot to a CDROM and you can extract data from a dead drive with boot sector corruption.

Chrome OS by Google

Chrome OS by Google

Chrome is a Google port of Linux for the every day person.

backyardbogfan said:

Chrome is a Google port of Linux for the every day person.

Click to expand...

Spreken ze deutch? Or what language do you speak usually? I myself don't speak techno jargon. I also ask myself every day if I am just an everyday man? Usually I answer myself, ya.

Pardon my ignorance but if your hard drive is toast how do you suppose one downloads and uses ghost, or should I have had that in my huge useless old collection of defunct non-working with this particular os CDs?

Thanks for trying though. So, back at the ranch, Ubuntu or Debian?

I still like Ubuntu WAY better than Windows. Secure, user friendly, etc., etc. I will try Mint sometime but I'm not bored with Ubuntu enough yet. Setting up a good fast free VPN, so even my ISP can't see my shit, is proving to be a bit of a challenge though. I tried Fringe and they totally screwed my connection/computer, so I had to reload Ubuntu and start all over. But even that was easy peazy, even for a computer dolt like myself.

Does anybody know of a safe, reliable, fast, free VPN server and client that works with Ubuntu 12.04?

may i suggest you ditch ubuntu. maybe even boycott them. canonical are not in the spirit of Free Software at all. they seem more like wanna-be win/mac monopolists intent on spying on you and data-mining for profit (see the deals they've had with google and amazon). not to mention numerous other doofus ideas. i was utterly blown away when win7 came out... microsoft listened to their users more than canonical did during the same time! this was unheard of in foss until then. you know there's something wrong when they do worse by users' wants than one of the biggest crooks in the software game.

screw canonical. they were a marketing ploy from the beginning, imo.

fortunately, this is still the world of foss, and they cant stop anyone taking their os and making it not suck as they make it suck.

take a look to see some of the ubuntu-based distros out there. this way you get ubuntu under the hood, but (probably) without as much of the crap.

but indeed, debian based too...

many will mention mint, which has both ubuntu based and debian based releases.

i'll mention crunchbang, which was ubuntu based, and is now debian based, and is still as useable as it was when based on ubuntu, and still a nice balance of comfortable and lightweight (it's no bloater), that doesnt pull the rug from under you, and has a nice community on its forum. or even try a rolling release debian respin, like VSIDO, aptosid, sidux, or whatever... that way you never need worry about doing big reinstalls or massive upgrades when new major versions are released.

if you're very security concerned, and still want to stick with ubuntu/debian based, try tails or backtrack.

if you are willing to explore outside ubuntu/debian based (or see what other debian based distros there are (sry, couldnt find a family tree svg for just debian)): http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg

i'm a fan of gentoo-based, though a full "stage 3 install" of gentoo is a bit daunting to many, there are the likes of Toorox (and sabayon and calculate and others) which provide a pleasant and convenient leg-up. Toorox is german... they dont make sloppy distros. hehe. solid.

oh, and it would be a crime if i didnt point out: http://gnu.org/distros
http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html <- lists 100% Free Software distros. that's free as in free speach. being free as in free beer is just a nice bonus. no proprietary blobs of unknown malware in those. (yay!)
potentially safer for the herb enthusiasts, imo.

Trisquel and gNewSense will likely be the ones you're interested in. or musix i suppose too.

and of course there's always distrowatch.com and other sites helping list even more. though nowhere has them all.




... and yes, i am a distroholic, that's how i know all this. have tried hundreds of distros (no exaggeration).

oh, i couldnt help myself. "debian > ubuntu" just didnt seem to cut it.

all the best.
-Digit

ps, oops, one of my links was to a google search... i should have made that a startpage.com or duckduckgo or yacy or seeks search link. foss ftw.

oh, gotta quickly add before i have to go:

GNU|Linux distros are awesome because you can generally try them in "live", running from cd (or usb pendrive), without need to install them to your hard drive.

one such a strongly advise everyone get downloaded and burned to cd, is systemrescuecd.

that old faithfull has saved me (and served me) more times than i can count.

been playing with this stuff since the early eighties and understand only a fraction of what the above poster left us . I sure do like the sig they chose though.

Lotta people like Mint. Even my son who works in IT uses Mint at work sometimes. But does anyone know, if when I download and run it, will the software and tweaks I have made to ubuntu be transferred? For example I'm wondering about the tweaks to firefox that I have made, and the software like bleachbit. Do they copy onto it automatically?