According to Google Trends, but also according to Distrowatch, our own statistics here at OSNews and overall sense of the industry during 2006, Ubuntu has a big leap in mind share ahead of its competition (please note that we don't dare to say "market share", although we are pretty confident that it's the most used Linux desktop out there today). The second Fedora has a very small edge ahead of SuSe (while in US is a clear second), while Debian is following fourth. Mandrake+Mandriva (add both names on Google Trends and then sum the results) is clearly way below the previous four distros, but a clear 5th nonetheless. Last year Ubuntu was only a bit ahead of the other distros worldwide, but 2006 seems to have skyrocketed the distribution in the people's minds and computers.
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Member since:2005-07-06
From what I hear, Ubuntu's strength is in it's user friendliness. This isn't true.
Yes and No,Ubuntu is userfriendly but perhaps not as userfriendly as let's say SuSE or Mandriva.
Personally what intriques me is debian as base with apt-get package manager and 20000+ of apps .After all a PC that's standing in the corner doing nothing is useless.
Installing apps with apt-get is swift and painless.With yet questions being asked during install.For example wether you use ntfs or PAL and wether you live in Europe and thus don't need an USA channellist when installing for you TV card.
Ubuntu is debian with better dependency checking and a arguable nice look with more uptodate stuff.
And no matter what project keeps you busy at the moment,chances are significant someone has allready paved the right way to follow for you.There's a tremendoes amount of documentation,wikis,guides,howtos geared towards Ubuntu online.
Ubuntu isn't per se the best in class with any given subject but in my opinion is the easiest accessible best allround linux distro for the average end-user.
After Ubuntu you only have the BSD's and Gentoo if you want to dig deeper instead of just working with what's common usage.
Edited 2006-12-10 11:57
Member since:2006-01-01
Ubuntu is debian with better dependency checking and a arguable nice look with more uptodate stuff.
No. Ubuntu is Debian with the exact same dependency checking, brown look, and with some stuff more up-to-date, some less up-to-date (when compared to Debian Testing & Unstable). Also, Ubuntu supports less architectures and much fewer packages -- Ubuntu's "universe" lacks security support.
Member since:2006-04-21
Member since:2005-07-10
"Even fedora is way more user friendly than Ubuntu."
"User friendly" is a subjective term. What is User-friendly to some could be user-crappy to others.
I find Slackware to be user friendly. Because I LIKE to edit my own config files. I don't care to have someone else's idea of how to do it override my own personal preferences.
I find Yast (Yast2) to be one of the most irritating things around. To others it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Ubuntu is brand new and does command a large mind-share of the Distrowatch traffic. If you will watch the hit counters you will see that as any distro begins doing something new or has some other news or controversy their traffic increases.
As far as Ubuntu and Kubuntu are concerned, they are basically the same distro with different DE's.
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Member since:
2006-08-17
From what I hear, Ubuntu's strength is in it's user friendliness. This isn't true. You still need to manually edit .conf files, etc..
There are some distributions where you never have to touch command line like SuSE and Mandriva. These distributions are a lot more noob friendly than Ubuntu. They have administrative tools that help you modify system settings. Ubuntu barely has gnome-system-tools. Then why is Ubuntu more friendly? It's all the advertising on the internet in forums and news sites. Timing is also a big factor. Ubuntu came out at a time where many people where really considering switching over to Linux. Even fedora is way more user friendly than Ubuntu.