"It may be a brave opinion but I predict that Ubuntu Linux and Windows Vista are going to be the two operating systems that will take over the largest chunk of the desktop OS market during the next couple of years. This comparison is based on my experience with both systems during the last couple of weeks on two different computers."
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Member since:2007-02-17
While it's still not ready for gamers, etc. It's way ahead of all the others.
PCLinuxOS was the first, and is still ahead of Ubuntu in terms of user-friendliness.
I have also heard good things said about Mandriva 2008 in this regard, but I haven't tried that myself.
Ubuntu is reasonable, but it is not the best. If you go to Ubuntu forums, you will still see a lot of "howto" descriptions where things are done via command-line. This is not necessarily the ONLY way to do thses things, but new users can sometimes get the mistaken impression that it is, and that they will be forced to use the command-line on Ubuntu.
Oh, BTW - Linux is perfectly OK for gamers. It is rather just that games companies have not yet ported their products to Linux. So you got the "actor" the wrong way around.
Member since:2006-09-03
Ubuntu has an advantage, it's a household name. PCLinuxOS while it may be OK, I don't know anyone I mean ANYONE that's either heard of it or used it. I agree that Linux is capable of being a good OS for gaming, however it wasn't until this month that ATI finally released a driver that wasn't crap and that's even up in the air based on my testing.
Sure, there are a lot of how-tos on the Ubuntu forums. That means it's getting adopted. The more the better.
UbuntuGuide can't be beat either:
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Gutsy
As for Mandrivia, does it even have a user base at all anymore?
I wish PCLinuxOS all the best, but with a name like that it'll never become a household name like Ubuntu could.
Edit: Checking their website and finding the how-tos I don't see how it's any different from Ubuntu. Example: ndiswrapper.
http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/200712/page03.html
"PCLinuxOS was the first"
Impossible, unless you consider a beta OS was ready for the masses (which counters your argument that it was the first by being a beta). It's first production (1.0) release wasn't until May 2007.
Sorry.
Edited 2007-12-04 23:42
Member since:2005-07-14
Member since:2005-07-06
>>What a load of crap.
Ubuntu is the FIRST Linux desktop in the last 10 years to provide a stable, usable desktop experience for the masses.<<
Sorry but that's bullshit: on my PC I couldn't install Ubuntu (display garbled, that's hard to troubleshoot!) but Mandriva worked for example.
This is strange as all Linux distrib package the same software.. But in this case Mandriva made something correctly that Ubuntu didn't, so Ubuntu wasn't "way ahead all the others".
Member since:2005-09-13
//But in this case Mandriva made something correctly that Ubuntu didn't, so Ubuntu wasn't "way ahead all the others".//
Yup. In *that* case. In *my* case Ubuntu installed perfectly, everything (including wireless) was working OOTB.
So. Does it rule? Does it suck? Or somewhere in-between?
Take a guess.
Member since:2005-10-02
That's crap. There were several n00b-friendly distributions around before Ubuntu. Ubuntu is nothing special in that regard. The special about Ubuntu is the marketing (sending cd's gratis to all places of the world - you don't find many Fedora install-CD's around).
Ubuntu suffers from the same crap that most other binary distributions suffer from: Dependencititis. Try to remove one package and you'll end up with virtually no packages on the system. Fedora is no better. An ubuntu based on Arch Linux would be much better. Or put differently. A noob-friendly Arch Linux.
If we could get the decentralized installation framework from Windows and Mac OS X with the clean logical NeXTSTEP-thinking and the openness of Linux as well as the centralized package management from Linux. Now that would be quite a system.
PS: Add to this a Desktop with the object oriented nature of OS/2 WPS. Oooh... That'll be a killer OS.
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Member since:
2006-09-03
What a load of crap.
Ubuntu is the FIRST Linux desktop in the last 10 years to provide a stable, usable desktop experience for the masses.
While it's still not ready for gamers, etc. It's way ahead of all the others.