← Back to team overview

elementary-dev-community team mailing list archive

Re: elementary, ubuntu, and debian

 

Hello David,

Good morning!

I can see how it wouldn't be so easy to switch, and I don't think it would be an easy affair either.

Well the benefit from switching in my opinion would be at least switching to a more open and transparent code-review process. debian seems to be more community focused whereas ubuntu is more corporate driven. Would you say that's accurate? In my personal situation, I have decided that if it is not a completely decentralized, open and transparent process, it can be corrupted - either by governmental organizations or by profit motives.

Have you seen prism-break.org ?  After lengthy discussion, Ubuntu and all ubuntu based derivatives were deemed unfit for the site (by the philosophy of: if you don't trust the source, you can't trust anything downstream of it). Debian is listed as an option on their site as a "strong and ethical distribution".

All things considered, elementary is doing fantastic things and I am a strong supporter. Obviously I am not representative of most users, just that the icing on the cake for me would be simplicity, beauty AND security and privacy (of which I think debian offers a better option than ubuntu).

Thanks for helping to build a great OS and I look forward to working with you on Photos (my first linux app btw). I love that I've been able to dive right into the code and pick it up so fast. Of course I still have a long way to go and quite a lot more to learn, but I'm loving vala and linux dev so far!

Cheers,
Tristan


On 5 February 2014, at 08:42 , David Gomes wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> >In that regard, I am wondering if the team has discussed switching to
> debian as the base
> Yes, it has been discussed a few times, usually for other reasons
> though.
> 
> It's not as simple as editing base="ubuntu" to base="debian", and
> unfortunately, most of the people who ask us for it seem to think so.
> 
> >because it seems that ubuntu cares less about their users and privacy
> these days.
> We are using Ubuntu as a base, we don't ship
> ubuntu-desktop and honestly that's where most of the criticism to
> Ubuntu's lack of privacy concerns lies - the Amazon in the Dash
> thing. We don't have that, so I don't really see how switching to
> Debian would help us respect our users' privacy more.
> 
> Cheers,
> David
> 
> 
> On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 3:33 PM, Tristan Petersen <tristang4@xxxxxx> wrote:
> Sergey
> 
> Glad you touched on security & privacy concerns. I am new to the elementary dev community, but I am wondering if there has been any talk among the team in this regard. I was drawn to elementary for its simplicity and beauty but at the same time I have strong concerns about security and privacy, more so in light of the NSA revelations.
> 
> In that regard, I am wondering if the team has discussed switching to debian as the base because it seems that ubuntu cares less about their users and privacy these days.
> 
> Cheers,
> Tristan
> 
> 
> On 4 February 2014, at 23:35 , Sergey Shnatsel Davidoff wrote:
> 
> > Okay, it's there and back again! I've just arrived home, got only 1 hour of sleep on the plane, so take everything I say in the next 18 hours with a grain of salt.
> >
> > FOSDEM was tons of fun! I've kicked it off by donating to GNOME - "Hey guys, I'm from elementary, we need you to keep up the good work on the libraries!", to Libre Graphics Magazine - "Oh, you're from elementary? You guys have some great designers!" (btw, great magazine, I definitely recommend it to everyone in here who's interested in design), to TOR just to get an awesome Snowden poster, and finally running into a guy from Jolla totally by accident, finding out the Jollla schedule for the day and then sieging him with questions - "Y U NO ship to Russia?!" and so on.
> >
> > I really look up to the ex-Nokia developers and designers who went on to found Jolla - Maemo was a-w-e-s-o-m-e and Sailfish is going to be even better! So I proceeded to attend their talk about libhybris and then their community roundtable (it seems my experience making distros and poking security has come in handy) and finally a community dinner, whee! Now I know everything I ever wanted about their phone, even got to play with one for a while. Also chatted with the developers (my N900 caused quite some nostalgia), plus I got a free hat with "Jolla" on it. Fanboy's dream come true, that!
> >
> > I kinda missed having an elementary tee, I guess I should have ordered one in advance. No instant props out of nowhere! Looking back, I don't think I ever did anything not worthy of a representative of the project (for once!), so hopefully next year...
> > Too bad nobody else of ours made it there - or just never told me? I'd love to meet you guys in person. In your absence I had to hit up random Mozilla guys and discussing fun stuff like Rust and Serval. When I could find them, anyway :(
> >
> > And man, the talks! There were just so many of them! I'll be watching the ones I missed later on the recordings for sure. No way you can attend all the interesting ones in just two days. For the security- and privacy-concerned like me I especially recommend the "NSA operation ORCHESTRA" keynote, it's great. Software archeology also, for the general audience. And "What's cooking in GStreamer" will be interesting to people who work with it.
> >
> > By the way, Brussels itself is very nice - amazing sculptures everywhere! A lot of lions among them, too. The royal square alone can be studied for hours. Definitely recommended.
> > --
> > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~elementary-dev-community
> > Post to     : elementary-dev-community@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~elementary-dev-community
> > More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
> 
> 
> --
> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~elementary-dev-community
> Post to     : elementary-dev-community@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~elementary-dev-community
> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
> 



Follow ups

References