The Search for the Source
Now that I've been digging deeper into the OS, I took my first look at the /etc and /home directories from an analytical standpoint. I was quite astonished. Most user friendly distributions are unable to reach a high level of integration without a good deal of bulk, which to me, actually makes the interface seem less cohesive and more likely to break. It also makes us hypocrites in one of the larger arguments against Microsoft, if you hadn't noticed. Ubuntu, on the other hand, manages to make the experience feel extremely feature rich without a great deal of software installed. This less is more philosophy seems to result in the most cohesive desktop I've personally experienced, but I haven't used OS X either.
The Great Assent
Don't get me wrong, there are some things I'd rather not have, such as Postfix and Mutt. I figure if someone wants these things they'll know how to install them, and they're pretty much unnecessary with the very excellent Evolution 2. But then, Postfix follows Canonical's no listening policy by default, which makes it practically a non-issue. The point is that there's nothing that I absolutely can't stand having installed, and that's an accomplishment. Remember, as an Archer I'm used to the absolute minimum.
An lsmod has similar results. The Ubuntu team has made it clear they don't want anyone to have to compile their own kernel, and while there are a great number of modules available, only the necessary ones are loaded by default, for the most part. This is why I had some issues with PPP and APM, but I'm sure they'll be straightened out. As far as the ease of installing Nvidia drivers, I know Canonical is working on a smoother solution.
The King's Library
Debian's package manager is more complex than most, both checking dependencies and handling configuration dynamically. For the record, both of these traits can also be thought of as weaknesses, but they're generally considered strengths. Now, being so complex, apt and dpkg have a great deal of functionality which takes time and patience to master.
But you thought I said this is a user friendly distribution, did you? Well I did, and this is where synaptic comes into the equation. Synaptic is a graphical front end for apt, created by Conectiva when they modified apt to work with RPM's. It's been available in every Debian distribution I've tried, but people seem to forget it when they decry apt as too complicated.
I could talk about package management all day (imagine that), so let me tie this up quickly. Synaptic adequately captures the base power of apt into a front end which is easily usable by novices. However, if you know what you're doing, or if something goes wrong, apt and dpkg are still fully functional on the command line.
It should also be noted that Canonical is maintaining a full repository of it's own to avoid the pains of compatibility with Debian's. For this reason, only about 1000 packages are officially available according to the website, but there are many unofficial packages available in the unsupported Universe repository. I fully expect the official repository to grow over time as Canonical gains the capacity to maintain it.
