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Introduction

We encountered many issues with Ubuntu 12.04 not being stable enough and having bugs unfixed, or ubuntu dependencies not being as good as the Debian one.

All of our clients are using Ubuntu 12.04 32 bits and we decided to find an alternative to replace Ubuntu before the LTS expires.

Which alternative?

We decided to choose Debian for the following reason:

  • More stable than Ubuntu as doesn't have the extra layers of the latest
  • Not loaded with all the extra softwares
  • Doesn't have any commercial direction
  • Supports LTSP
  • Our team is used to Debian's way
  • Our server run Debian

32 bits vs 64

Our servers run 64 bit version of Debian but we need to see if all software are compatible.

Stable or Testing

  • For Services: Stable
  • For BlueLight team: Testing
Using Testing will allow us to work on the coming version of Debian and therefore foresee the possible problems. It will allow us to test in advance the stable to come and be prepared at the time the release come.

Migrating from Ubuntu to Debian

Problems

  1. People are now used to have the close, minimize, maximize buttons on the left
  2. People are used to the launcher
  3. People are used to firefox, thunderbird and chrome

Solutions

  1. Use tweaks to make the system look like unity, get the users used to the left buttons even if not handy
  2. Gnome 3 has a similar launcher
  3. icedwisel, icedove and chromium just have different icons than their homologous

 

For thunderbird install, use the mint deb if necessary: http://packages.linuxmint.com/pool/import/t/

Find out the fastest mirrors

Trying to get Testing installed I realized it would take me hours as it depends on the connection to the mirror.

In order to select the best mirror do the following from a Debian machine (A source list will be copied to your home directory):

su -
apt-get install netselect-apt
netselect-apt
mv /etc/apt/sources.list{,.bak}
cp ~/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update

Here is the result from 2014/01/04 in BlueLight:

# Debian packages for stable
deb http://debian.mirror.net.in/debian/ stable main contrib
# Uncomment the deb-src line if you want 'apt-get source'
# to work with most packages.
# deb-src http://debian.mirror.net.in/debian/ stable main contrib

# Security updates for stable
deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib

From Thunderbird to Icedove

for each user

mv ~/.icedove{,-org}
mv ~/.thunderbird ~/.icedove

Extra packages

apt-get install rsync vlc audacious emacs23-nox ssh icedove chromium gnome-tweak-tool

Changing the appearance

Adding the Ubuntu 12.04 icons

rsync -av root@192.168.10.2:/usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark /usr/share/icons/
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