LinxForums gives short overviews of the ten major distributions, and concludes: “People often ask ‘so which distribution is right for me?’ The answer is very simple: ‘It depends!’ It depends on your needs, it depends on your experience, on your philosophy or your tastes. It depends on a lot of things, and even if you found the one you preferred among these 10 majors distributions, don’t forget that there are about 340 other distributions available, which could potentially suit your needs. If you’re ready for the adventure, go and explore.”
I guess these are someone’s personal opinions? They are thought-provoking but also contentious and many might disagree with them. Of the three distros I know – Debian, Ubuntu and SuSE – it’s hard to agree with his summaries of Debian and Ubuntu.
He criticizes the use of a text-based installer, but in fact this is very easy to use and in no way inferior to that of, say, WinXP. He says that Ubuntu’s business plan appears to be unviable, but I would think it’s rather early to tell in any way. And he is particularly critical of Debian, saying it is too slow to evolve and lacks “eye-candy configuration tools”. Well if you run Unstable, which a lot of people do, Debian evolves very fast; and as for configuration tools, you now get lots of gui ones with both KDE and Gnome, still others that are gtk like Synaptic and in addition Gkdebconf, a gtk-gui version of the original text configurator. No one need starve when running Debian.
“Which distro is right for me?” is almost impossible to answer. I guess the only way is suck it and see: try two or three and see which ones you like. We are all spoiled for choice, that’s for sure.
Edited 2006-04-01 16:55
Ok I am running Debian unstable and in some cases even use experimental packages. I am here to vouch for the fact that Debian is really slow in some package branches. It takes forever for a new version of gnome to get included even in experimental and at the same time kde gets added to unstable within a week of a new release. Provided that only a couple of years back gnome used to be the de facto desktop environments for debian these huge delays are just a damn shame.
Other than this small grudge the rest is true. You do not have to use text or menu driven frontend for apt-get and synaptic has been arround for quite some time. Also having several interfaces that you can use is a plus. If your system ever breaks down or you can’t /don’t want to run xorg you can still install or remove applications. If you run a server there is no reason to have xorg running. I would much rather use the ram for apache or some sql server than have xorg loaded. Most servers don’t have a monitor attached anyway.
I am here to vouch for the fact that Debian is really slow in some package branches. It takes forever for a new version of gnome to get included even in experimental and at the same time kde gets added to unstable within a week of a new release. Provided that only a couple of years back gnome used to be the de facto desktop environments for debian these huge delays are just a damn shame.
Funny you should mention that. I just checked today the Debian devs mailing lists to see how the gnome team is doing and it seems that with 2.14 they have been exceptionally snappy. The platform is already in unstable and also parts of the desktop stuff. Here’s an hourly updated summary that shows their progress:
http://www.0d.be/debian/debian-gnome-2.14-status.html
Ubuntu still has to show a convincing business model.
— “Ubuntu still has to show a convincing business model.”
Why?
Last I checked, most distros don’t have a business model at all, much less a convincing one. How would that make it a better OS?
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“Ubuntu does’nt have a business model”
—
“Why?
Last I checked, most distros don’t have a business model at all, much less a convincing one. How would that make it a better OS?”
—
You are RIGHT!
Why? Yes, why? Why is necessary a business model?
What is the business model of debian?
What is the business model of Gentoo?
What is the business model of Slackware?
What is the business model of Damn Small Linux?
You do not need a busines model to make a good distro!
You need will, intelligence, know-how, work, and at least one guy, but mthe more people involved, the better…
But if you want my opinion.. Probably Ubuntu is one of those that DO have a business model behind !!!
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Edited 2006-04-02 09:38
There’s a difference between Ubuntu and non-commercial distros like Debian and Gentoo. Ubuntu is a commercial distro whose developers are paid employees. Debian and Gentoo don’t need a business model because their developers are volunteers who don’t get paid for their work anyway. Slackware’s business model is to sell the installation CDs to allow its main developer do full-time work for Slackware. Don’t know if Damn Small Linux has a similar business model.
Ubuntu is shipping free CDs and it needs to pay the developers, so a viable business model would secure Ubuntu’s future even if Shuttleworth makes bad investments and loses his money. You do want Ubuntu to continue in the future, don’t you?
“Ubuntu is a commercial distro whose developers are paid employees.”
Sorry to disagree, but how exactly is ubuntu a commercial distro? it simply isn’t.
True, cannonical has a business model arround ubuntu (commercial support, certification…), and i believe it has to start working in the near future (actually, the next version, 6.06 wich is an “enterprise-grade” release will help in this point).
There are a couple of points here (correct me if i’m wrong):
– ubuntu is not cannonical, and vice-versa.
– Mark Shuttleworth believes in it’s business model, to the point of creating the ubuntu foundation (see http://www.ubuntu.com/news/UbuntuFoundatio)
Mark Shuttleworth believes in it’s business model
Sure he believes in it — otherwise he wouldn’t have started it in the first place. I’m only commenting on the viability aspect of this business model. Shuttleworth himself has repeated in numerous interviews that he cannot predict if this experiment actually turns out to become financially successful.
The trouble with “philanthropic business plans” is that there hasn’t been too many of its kind before. I wish more business plans would be philanthropic in nature. And all Ubuntu users, yours truly among them, surely wish that Shuttleworth’s philanthropic business plan turns out to be successful because that would mean that we can enjoy Ubuntu for many years to come.
Shuttleworth’s philanthropic business plan is truly a business plan and I believe it’s also truly philanthropic. There is no contradiction in terms here.
As for Ubuntu being a non-commercial distro, I don’t see how that can be because Ubuntu is an essential part in Shuttleworth’s philanthropic business plan and Shuttleworth makes all the big decicions for Ubuntu’s development. What I find important to stress here, though, is that non-commercial distros like Gentoo and Debian don’t have the funding to employ any full-time developers or ship free-of-charge CDs like Ubuntu. But I’m not going to argue over this issue any further. If I fail to convince you, then let’s just agree to disagree. 🙂
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“Ubuntu is shipping free CDs and it needs to pay the developers, so a viable business model would secure Ubuntu’s future even if Shuttleworth makes bad investments and loses his money”
—-
Well, I am sure that Mr Shuttleworth has a business mentality, and as I told you before ‘probably Ubuntu is one of those Distros that DO have a business model behind’
But, if as you say, “if Shuttleworth makes bad investments and loses his money”, some of the programmers, other programmers or even the same, will countinue the distro, or another distro with the same concepts, or anyway, debian or other distros will be able to use the software and experience of Ubuntu, but with a little less money and ressources …
That is the nature of the Free-OpenSource Software, and what makes it so valuable !
It won’t be lost if anyone can retake it and reuse it.
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Edited 2006-04-02 12:12
“The business model doesn’t seem to be viable.”
Err… Why is that a conn to the users?
the business model, as far as i know, only has to be viable to ubuntu/cannonical itself, and imho it is still a bit too early to tell if it’s viable or not for them. (most of the other distros have been arround for many years now)
for the end user, what matters is all the rest: things like speed, stability, ease of use, looks…
Whichever one best supports the hardware I am attempting to install on….
True,seems my overclocked 2200MHz AMD64 xp3000+ box runs best on Ubuntu hands down.
A very readable article that gives a drive by view of popular distros.
Although all the distros are based on linux kernel and share similar programs each distro seems to have developed its own philosophy of presentation that appeals to the communities that build up around them.
If you ever wondered why the linux community seems unable to unify behind a single distro to present to consumer america this article will hit the switch.
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Well , having an overview of the major ditros is OK, provided that something more substantial is said…
To start with it is unclear how to define a major distro. How to define “Major” in Linux terms?
We could agree, though, tha most of those which are in the article are major, either for the number of users or for the importance as historic pillars of the free-Open Source software and Linux distros. Or maybe because they are “MotherDistros” to be based on…, but the selection criteria for this is amways, and remains here subjective and unclear… Saying simply “dedicated to the 10 most famous and popular”, is not enough for a serious article on the major Linux Distros!
Where is a real criteria of selection? and the verifiable statistics? All this is necessary to move further forward in the development and disribution of Linux and FLOSS.
Distros as Mepis, Xandros, or even Knooppix or or Fedora (why fedora , and not RedHat?) could have been substituted by others arguably (no sentimental reasons here, I apperciate all of them)…
The intention of the article is not bad, above all for newbies, but says what all the more experienced (not even xperts) Linux users know, more or less. Maybe a more solid article of this kind is really needed!
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