Wow. The great and storied "hacker news". I came here expecting great discussions on the technology of hmd's and am instead subjected to yet another chapter in the Google soap opera internet hate a thon. What a fucking joke.
The main difference is Debian isn't quite as user friendly out of the box. Sudo isn't set up for you for example so you'll be in for a surprise the first time you try to use it. Also, Debian isn't quite as pretty. The fonts aren't as good and the desktop looks quite a bit dated. The upside is Debian at least for me is much faster. I don't know what Canonical did to Ubuntu 11.10 but it drug for me. Also, Debian doesn't crash at all at least for me whereas Ubuntu did suffer some random instability.
That having been said, I like the idea of Ubuntu. I like the fact that they are trying to move the Linux desktop forward and I will happily return if they can get Unity straightened out. As it stands though, I'm a content Debian user for the forseeable future.
"75%...drivers...filesystems...it does seem to be getting quite bloaty"
Does the code that supports those drivers and filesystems slow the overall system down in any way? If not, how can you call it "bloat"? Bloat in this context generally means additional code that is out of proportion to its functionality while also using a disproportionate amount of memory and diskspace. There is legitimate bloat in the linux kernel but suggesting that that has anything to do with the variety of hardware support is to misunderstand the meaning of the word. Oh yeah, YMMV
No, its largely irrelevant nowadays. But there's a pile of cruft in there that could go ...
I'm not critiquing ANYTHING about the kernel. BUT. There IS a HUGE pile of crap still in there and everyone knows it. Don't nitpick my innocent and uncritical comment and try to turn it into a major critique of the kernel. Its still WAAAAAAYYYYY superior to the shite that still exists in Windows (because it simply MUST).
NO. Of COURSE it doesn't slow down the Linux experience but it might one day become too large to be realistically distributed without a lot of trimming.
I've been a major user, developer and proponent of Linux for decades. I use nothing else in my day to day life. Don't dare to presume to pull me up because I dare to comment on a seriously discussed and current problem with the current kernel. NAMELY: IT'S BECOMING A FAT BITCH AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT.
It's still and always will be my OS of choice. Whether or not I knew how to exclude certain chunks of irrelevance from my build or not.
I find compositing to be quite useful on a few scenarios. Hovering the icon over a program in the task bar makes it simple to quickly monitor the operation of a terminal app or what have you whilst reading something in a web browser without having to go through the trouble of rearranging your windows around. Also, the semi transparency while moving windows makes it easy to just click on the title bar and see what's going on in a window underneath. I love the scale effect where you can mouse to a corner and all of your windows show ike on Mac osx. That is a boon for window management when you have a lot going on. I also like the ease of compiz's zoom effect. Makes "full screening" flash videos much less of a hassle. Its the little things like all of these that add up to a great user experience for me from compiz.
I think it would be more productive to promote the licenses whose values line up with your own than trying to police the language. For my part, I will keep pointing out the ridiculousness of saying "$neologism != $foo, because $blog_post says $nelogism = $bar."
