I came here to say this. Debian is a good OS and is as mainstream as you can get without lots of fluff and it Just Works. I like that its not a "flavor of the week" distro, its what "flavor of the week" is *based on*.
Heh. Back in 2008 a classmate of mine was flabbergasted that I was running Debian. He didn't consider it to be a proper distro. Like it was some mythical proto-distro framework for others (Ubuntu et al.) to build on, rather than something to be used by mere mortals.
It brought all my bookmarks on to his machine!. So I deleted them in his machine, then they were also gone from my account in my Chromebook. Not only that all HIS bookmarks were on my machine. I deleted them. Then I found all my saved web passwords were on his machine! This screw up after bragging about two factor authentication.
You didn't disable Sync on his machine before deleting?
Ignoring all the ridiculous things in that list, your house doesn't have sufficient service to quick charge a car for 160 miles of range in 20 minutes.
I've seen suggestions before of having a home charging station; basically a battery pack that is always slow-charging, ready to dump it all into the EV when you need it.
But vendor lock-in is objectionable because it does, to whatever extent it succeeds, make you a slave.
That's not slavery. It's more like a protection racket.
You could refuse to buy an upgrade, but as time goes on compatibility with your customers and contractors will become more and more troublesome. You could completely drop our software, but the transition could be expensive and you'll be even less compatible with your customers and contractors. Or you can just pay up.
Do you know what happens when there's a freeze of the next stable? Well, it's easy, we don't upload to SID. But we upload to Experimental instead.
You brought up the amount of Sid in Ubuntu. My point was that only a small portion of Ubuntu "needs" to be bleeding edge, and that Sid is "good enough" for the rest of it. Now you're arguing that... Sid isn't bleeding edge because development happens in experimental? Yeah, I know. That's fine. I'm not worried about it.
The kernel 3.8 has been released 6 days ago. Do you think that's reasonable to expect that it reaches Debian in less than a week? I don't. Debian experimental has Firefox 19, and Libreoffice 4 and XFCE 4.10.
Not reasonable, no, but I wasn't about to claim 3.7 as the current version.
It doesn't matter what versions are in experimental, because - like you pointed out at the start of the thread - Ubuntu imports from Sid.
Well, have a better look before spreading lies. For kernel, web browser and libreoffice
Kernel:
Stable - 2.6
Testing - 3.2
Unstable - 3.2 (released July, 2012)
Current version - 3.8
Those 3.6/3.7 files seen in your link? Experimental. Yeah you could make it work, but then you aren't running Sid anymore. Not entirely. And if you run too much experimental for too long, something is going to end up horribly broken.
Firefox/Iceweasel:
Stable - 3.5
Testing - 10esr
Unstable - 10esr (released March 2012)
Current Version - 19.0
Libreoffice:
Stable - 3.5
Testing - 3.5
Unstable - 3.5 (released February 2012)
Current version - 4.0
YOU DO have very recent packages available, even right now, during the freeze of testing. I haven't checked DE and X, since I don't know what you run (eg: which graphic card, and which environment you like).
I run XFCE on testing, not that it matters.
XFCE:
Stable - 4.6
Testing - 4.8
Unstable - 4.8 (released Jan 2011)
Current Version - 4.10 (released April 2012)
Like I said, Sid isn't bleeding edge. Of the packages here, the newest in Sid is the kernel: 7 months old.
It's also worth noting that drivers receive unblock from the release team so that they can enter stable.
Well that's great (and I genuinely mean that), but a bleeding-edge enthusiast would only see that 3.2 != 3.8.
How could this be, when 80% of the packages of Ubuntu comes from Debian SID?
Bleeding edge only matters in software you directly interact with for casual use: That 20% should easily cover the kernel, X, the DEs, the web browsers, Libreoffice, Wine, and any GUI programs large enough to have a Windows port. Sid may not be bleeding edge, but for the other 80% it isn't obsolete enough to truly bother anyone that notices.
RHEL is used for hardened unix workstations, too. RHEL5 is the only enterprise linux distro I know of worth using with FIPS 140-2 and DoD APL certification, meaning that it's the only option for military workstations other than Windows.
And you're allowed to install third-party software in that situation?
Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine. -- Andy Warhol