There is a general dissent growing at the popularity that Ubuntu enjoys among the Linux users. Considering that Ubuntu has maintained the number one slot at distrowatch.com for a whole year now, the feeling is a bit expected. This article tries to explore what is it that makes Ubuntu so popular among its users and how other linux distributions can take a leaf from ubuntu to effectively leverage their position in the popularity chart.
Is the Word Ubuntu in “Ubuntu Linux” Over-Hyped ?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Ubuntu does a good job
of being beginner friendly
AND having big repositories
(about 19,000 packages now).
A lot of other distros
do one OR the other
but Ubuntu does BOTH.
Plus Ubuntu uses Debian package management
which is my favorite.
Some vendors are starting to preinstall Ubuntu now.
http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/23168/
Edited 2006-08-18 06:21
I’ve personally and commercially used various OSes and distributions. I think the past articles, and this one is a very low attempt at attacking ubuntu. I pity people who have nothing else to do but to try and attack projects.
I’ve used various systems from *BSD to major linux distributions, and I must say ubuntu is very slick for even my friendly windows admins.
I really don’t know why some of these people are talking bad about Ubuntu. The Ubuntu team does write code as well. Ubuntu might be a fork of debian, but the team does make their distribution available for installing not only a desktop, but server as well. The server install allows anyone to quickly install a LAMP server from the boot options.
What the past few articles(and this one) forget to mention the ubuntu team has made the installer easy, quick, and clean for every user. I personally use ubuntu at the corporate level for many computers in the building. Ubuntu has the most common packages anyone will ever need.
What the other article I read on the package count.. The reviewers are forgetting to tell you Ubuntu doesn’t package every perl-, python-, ruby-, *language here* package from debian. The last article I read should be “what debian doesn’t want you to know”.
Please, people.. stop trolling on a perfectly good ditro with good hard working people behind the project.
Ubuntu has been made popular and with the craze spawned haters are there are with Google. I personally see the ubuntu project as a good alternative for the desktop(and server), and will continue to inform others of Linux, *BSD, and distros making headway in development.
I think the past articles, and this one is a very low attempt at attacking ubuntu. I pity people who have nothing else to do but to try and attack projects.
And I think you did a poor job understanding what the article meant, if you actually read more than just the title.
the author made valid and arguably objective points in showing how ubuntu became so popular. It’s a sensible and semi-scientific writeup containing analysis of the strategies that got ubuntu where it is now.
the title may sound to be no better than a low attempt to you, but it’s actual content is on the contrary to those who would actually read it before making remarks on it.
Sometimes I am seriously just baffled at how duped all of the Ubuntu fanboys are. You say that Ubuntu contributes patches back to the community like its something special. Its called the GPL. They are legally required to contribute their patches back.
I used Ubuntu for several months trying to figure out what all the fuss was about. There really is nothing special about the product that they have produced. All of the major distributions seem to be just as good as Ubuntu. What they have done that is special is they have convinced a lot of people to work for free by convincing those same people that Ubuntu is about humanity and not about Canonical making a profit.
If you think that Canonical and Mark Shuttleworth are such great humanitarians and all about Open Source, you should take a look into what Canonical spends its development resources on. The majority of their development resources are spent on a product called Launchpad. Launchpad is not open source and when last I checked there were no plans for it to ever be open source. I think that pretty much says it all.
I am wary of rich men that come bearing gifts. Rich men become rich because they like making money, not because they like giving it away. Once they start spending money, well, most the time it is an investment rather than charity.
What makes me wary of Ubuntu is that Canonical does not tell you how they plan to profit off of it (selling technical support to end users is not very profitable, unlike the enterprise) and that they give out free CDs (this reminds me of AOL- give them all free CDs get them using the product and then screw them). It concerns me that so many people are working on it that could be working on Debian or some other distro where you at least know how your work is going to be used.
Sorry. This is just too cynical. Shuttleworth and Canonical have categorically stated that Ubuntu will continue to remain free. Not just for the present but for it’s lifetime.
Of course they want to make money but it seems clear to me that this is not going to be from home users or even people who use Ubuntu for business purposes if they do not take up additional services, support, etc.
Currently I do not use Ubuntu, and I am not a “fanboy” (one of the most infantile words to be found in discussion forums). I believe the “hype” such as it is comes merely from those who happen to believe it is worth spreading the word about a distro that makes it easy for newcomers to familiarise themselves with Linux, and not from Canonical.
I believe the trolling and flaming comes mainly from those who are either a) jealous of Ubuntu’s success, b) ultra-paranoid or overly cynical, c) believe Linux should belong to some kind of Geek elite or d) upset that the source of Ubuntu should be a multi-millionaire instead of some kind of radical, politically-correct, hardcore nerd.
I do not believe Ubuntu is necessarily the best distro nor the most exciting. But it is successful and has brought countless new people to Linux and with largely good experiences at that (unlike my first forays with Red Hat about 3 years ago, which drove me nuts so that I kept it just long enough to struggle for a couple of months, realise that Linux would be something to watch and then uninstall it until I could find a more useable distro).
But I am MORE than tired of seeing the same old garbage surface in the forums every time Ubuntu is mentioned. It is neither the new Massiah nor the Devil incarnate in an OS. It is a very decent Linux distro and installing it will not deliver your soul to some evil force.
There really is nothing special about the product that they have produced.
Really? Then perhaps you could recommend me another Debian based distro that will get me the new Gnome as soon as it comes out.
I don’t know about others, but for me those two factors trump all.
If that is what is important to you, then it sounds like Ubuntu is the distribution for you.
Sometimes I am seriously just baffled at how duped all of the Ubuntu fanboys are. You say that Ubuntu contributes patches back to the community like its something special. Its called the GPL. They are legally required to contribute their patches back.
No they are not. The GPL requires you give the source to the people you give the binaries to, it says nothing about sending changes back upstream. That is purely voluntary.
Thank you for the clarification, but with a free product this is virtually the same thing. If your changes are good then other people will grab them.
If you think that Canonical and Mark Shuttleworth are such great humanitarians and all about Open Source, you should take a look into what Canonical spends its development resources on. The majority of their development resources are spent on a product called Launchpad.
Please read about The Shuttleworth Foundation –>> http://www.tsf.org.za/
The amount of social, free, volunter work that foundation has done for the under privilaged people of south africa is enormous. Shuttleworth also doesn’t simply throw money at the problem. If you read on you will see that what he’s trying to do is create a sustainable ecosystem of free software, free/cheap education, equality and freedom for poor of that country.
What makes me wary of Ubuntu is that Canonical does not tell you how they plan to profit off of it (selling technical support to end users is not very profitable, unlike the enterprise) and that they give out free CDs (this reminds me of AOL- give them all free CDs get them using the product and then screw them).
For your argument on end-user / enterprise support and issue of not telling on plan to profit off of it… refer here –> http://www.ubuntu.com/support/paid
Edited 2006-08-18 10:16
The majority of their development resources are spent on a product called Launchpad. Launchpad is not open source and when last I checked there were no plans for it to ever be open source.
From the Launchpad FAQ at:
https://launchpad.net/faq
“Is Launchpad open source? Will it be?
Our goal is to release all of Launchpad as free software, though it will take some time (potentially, years) before that happens.
We are doing so in a piecemeal approach. Parts of Launchpad have already been released as free software where they would be particularly useful to other projects. And very few, if any, Launchpad modifications to upstream code are not immediately published to those upstream projects.”
So there are plans for it to be eventually fully open source.
What exactly is launchpad ?
Could someone please explain to me.
It’s a website where all feature-proposals, bug reports, translations, etc. concerning Ubuntu is being done. It’s meant as a gateway for the community to easily take part in developing Ubuntu. I’ve personally translated some modules into Danish and made some feature proposals for Edgy (which weren’t accepted, hehe
).
The word Ubuntu in Ubuntu Linux is not over hyped, but I think the distro is. I’ve followed every release and I really struggle to see anything that makes Ubuntu unique from other Linux distros. The hype is not bad though, if it exposes more people to Linux and opensource. The only thing thats bugging me about these pro and anti Ubuntu articles is that they kind of make the Linux community look so disjointed.
I agree with you.
One thing though: Ubuntu is popular/hyped because of how easily its users can get involved. They are excited about the distro because they feel they’re a part of it.
Thats the amazing thing about Ubuntu. I’m not sure how they achieved it, but look how much information is on the wiki, the forums. This is because these people feel involved. They embrace new users, and have plenty of guidance for them.
Its really amazing how it was pulled off. You see it all around the desktop now. Ways to get involved in translations, ways to easily find help etc. In etch, there is even more work to assist getting bugs into Malone.
Its not technically the best distro in my opinion, but they’ve done so much that people care about correctly.
Fedora and openSUSE should really study the way Ubuntu has engaged the community, and adopt some of the things Ubuntu has done.
Fedora and openSUSE should really study the way Ubuntu has engaged the community, and adopt some of the things Ubuntu has done.
It is already happening in Fedora case, you read this link below
http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/17/177220
which is also posted on OSNews http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=15540
I don’t me wrong, I like Fedora. I believe technically it is superior to Ubuntu. Fedora will never be on the same level as Ubuntu wrt community though. Fedora/RedHat just don’t seem to be trusted by the community I suppose.
the day that redhat becomes compatible with the debian repositories is the day that it becomes what ubuntu is. ubuntu is a polished subset of debian totally geared towards the desktop, which as its popularity shows, is EXACTLY what many have been waiting years for
Where is this growing dissent?
If there’s dissent about anything that’s popular should come from a overall feeling that said popular thing is inferior or overrated.
but frankly, i’ve been using Ubuntu for well over a year, and i couldn’t rate it highly enough. i’ve used a lot of distros over the years (starting with Slackware), and Ubuntu is my OS of choice. Over windows, Over OSX, over <insert distro here>.
To be sure, there are other great distros. I haven’t tried the newest Suse, but i’m looking forward to it. Maybe some day soon another distro will emerge that is equally Free (in all respects), better-polished, and more innovative. But for the time being, Ubuntu deserves all the credit it has recieved.
Edited 2006-08-18 06:48
Agreed, having run MacOS, BeOS, Windows, Debian, RedHat, Fedora, Gentoo, and Ubuntu all as my primary OS. Ubuntu is my favorite. For me it has just the right balance of getting out of my way when I need to get work done, yet still fun to spend hours under the hood learning and tweaking.
It’s just your typical backlash. It happened to Gentoo, it happened to Slack, it even happened to Debian itself. The more things change…
Think less of it as ‘overhyping’ and think more of it as ‘encouragement & acknowledgment’.
Every distro has its moment of fame (and they deserve it). Let Ubuntu enjoy theirs.
Good luck,
And the answr is aparently no, is it not overhyped.
So many distros are so close but not quite. The minor differences in Ubuntu might not mean much to you, but sometimes it is those little things that count.
I am no fanboy, if I find something I like better I’ll vote with my feet again.
Thank you for such a great distribution!
The teams work is appreciated, just like the teams of other major distributions.
Again, Thanks!
I kinda agree with him, although I don’t see what the title has to do with the rest of the article. It made me think: sigh another ubuntu bashing game, turned out to be the other way around, simply goes to show that it is becoming hyped: either article writers love it or they hate it, that’s what makes it overhyped.
A lot of people swear that Ubuntu is the best thing since sliced bread and other assert that they have a lot of problems with it. My guess is that the internationalization caused a big part of the gap between these polar opinions.
I do like to communicate in English with the computers. But I have installed Kubuntu in Bulgarian for my parents. An guess what – I still receive so much support calls for problems which I cannot reproduce in my environment. I thought that this is a Ubuntu bug, but the Debian’s versions of Gnome and KDE are barely usable in Bulgarian as well.
Also I have the feeling that Ubuntu’s stability degrades over time. But I’m the tinkerer type and it could be just me. May be the “typical user” which does not need SSH and compiler don’t share this experience.
So – yes – Ubuntu makes a great desktop if you don’t use it in Bulgarian and if you play only with your browser, email client and office suite and don’t look aside. If you want more, well it depends on what you want…
Why, oh why, does every blogger and opinion piece writer have this compulsive need to kick dirt on Debian in order to boost Ubuntu? They always start by telling how difficult they’ve found Debian in the past and then proceed to testify how easy and wonderful they now find Ubuntu.
When Ubuntu was first introduced, Debian had the reputation to be very difficult to install. Not many people knew that Debian developers were working hard to fix that by building a brand new installer. Then Ubuntu took the new Debian installer that was still under development and that made Ubuntu look much easier to install than Debian. Some people still don’t know that Debian now uses this improved installer and that it’s very easy to install Debian nowadays.
The Debian installer has a “desktop” option that you can choose if that’s what you want. Maybe the writer of this blog entry missed that option. And the new version of the Debian installer (for the forthcoming Etch release) will have a GUI frontend and more detailed choices for choosing the desktop (or laptop) option that will meet your wishes.
Also, when Ubuntu was first introduced, Debian had experienced many delays with its stable release (Sarge) and those delays made Debian’s development process slower than usual. As a result, it looked like Debian has an exceptionally long release cycle and that it doesn’t have very up-to-date software even in unstable. Well, now the release cycle has been set to 18 months (that is quite appropriate for most servers) and unstable has mostly newer packages than Ubuntu, but people still think that Debian’s release cycle is too long and that it packages only outdated software.
Hence, when Ubuntu started, they had a perfect opportunity if they wanted to make it look like they had an improved version of Debian to offer (and, of course, they DID want to make it look that way). But even if that’s not true any more, people still keep repeating the mantra that Ubuntu is always and in every way better than Debian. They keep kicking dirt on Debian in order to make Ubuntu look better. I really wish they’d stop doing that.
Also, I’m not sure if Ubuntu uses the term “ubuntu” correctly when they say that their distro is “Linux for human beings”. What’s that supposed to mean? Does it mean that other GNU/Linux distros are not for human beings or does it mean that Ubuntu users are somehow more humane than the users of other distros? Does it mean that Ubuntu users are entitled to kick dirt on other distros in order to boost their own distro of choice? Could someone please explain the actual meaning of this “Linux for human beings” slogan?
Edited 2006-08-18 08:48
‘Could someone please explain the actual meaning of this “Linux for human beings” slogan?’
Of course ! It is what is called “marketing” 🙂
There is no bad in promoting oneself in a world full of other distributions (hey, more than a hundred).
I like the Linux for human beings bit. It is brilliant marketing. My favorite use of the humanity slogan was on the Ubuntu forums. I hung out there for a bit when I was using Ubuntu. Anytime anyone was really critical someone would post something like, “Ubuntu is about humanity. If you don’t like Ubuntu, then that must mean your against humanity.” It is somewhat reminiscent of George Bush and his speeches about terrorists. It is a logical fallacy of course, but cleverly phrased that kind of argument can be quite persuasive if you are not paying attention.
There does seem to be a bit of a backlash.
It seems to come from two main camps though:
1.) Neo-Luddites who feel that everyone who uses Linux must sit around compiling kernels every five seconds. Because they feel that’s the point of Linux?
2.) Anti-Corporatists (real word?) / Anti-Capitalists. Basically anyone who has money is inherently evil and cannot be trusted.
The last article that was posted on the subject a few days ago came from Camp # 1, maybe a little bit of # 2.
Criticizing Ubuntu doesn’t nessacerly put you into one or two, but when you write an entire page about garbage like Mark Shuttleworth having sinister plans, etc., and then throw in a tid-bit (which may be valid), to try and throw people of the scent, you’ll have a hard time not being labelled.
Edited 2006-08-18 08:56
I think that you are a little off the mark here with the anti-capitalist bit. I do not think that anyone here is against making a profit with Linux. I applaud Redhat (to my knowledge Redhat is the only Linux company that makes any real profit) for making a business out of it. There just happen to be certain business practices that I find objectionable. Most of these business practices are the kind that actually limit competition. It is my fear that Canonical is engaged in some of these practices. Maybe I am just being paranoid. It is up to you to decide for yourself. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I think that this they show at least some the tell-tale signs of shady dealing.
Ok, here’s my story:
I first encountered linux sometime around suse 6. I got one free CD from some magazine and I was “attempting to become a hacker (net/cracker actualy heh)” and the first thing I read was “use something else than windows”.
You know.. a “cool thing to try”. So I tried it. Didn’t work. I gave it rest (I’m an avid game player) for a year or so until I found Mandrake (8 I believe). I used that as a very rarely used secondary OS in which nothing worked
Then came Mandrake 9 and fixed most issues. It’s that time I started to look at the Linux desktop a bit more. I started to actualy work (program) there and even got involved in an OS project.
Later when I got a bit more comfortable with linux in general I tried other more “hackish” distroes like Arch, Crux and so on. I even went to FreeBSD and back.
I discovered ubuntu with hoary. It wasn’t perfect, but it was best. Oh as a side note, I knew debian, but never liked it. It was too.. undecided. I like choice but with sane defaults.
For me the dapper was decisive and I’m now a happy “long time supported” user.
Why the long story? Well.. I just wanted to explain that altho marketing is important (eg: I got the big players first), it’s no use if you don’t have:
a) good supportive community
b) proper defaults (this is not ok in 99% of distroes)
c) “just right” packages defaultly installed, a part of b up there..
d) speed (some distroes were too slow for me)
I’m sure there are others but as you see marketing won’t buy you a normal, stable user if you don’t have a good “product” for them.
Remember I’m talking desktop.
I’m not saying that Ubuntu didn’t have some “marketing tricks” on it’s side, I’m saying that those don’t matter that much unless you have proper product in the first place or are MS.
“a) good supportive community”
You can say that again!
I don’t know how many of you have ever filed a bug report but, well I did and it’s just incredible how much people actually care about it although it seems to be a minor problem and might be related to my strange hardware…
First I got no response but after two or three weeks it seems the report had propagated upwards on the list and a lot of people asked helpful and precise questions plus they didn’t tell me how stupid I was when I did something wrong. Instead it sounded more like “Thanks a lot for your effort. What I meant was you should type this rather than that…”
That being said I use both, Ubuntu and Suse for they’re good at different things.
d) speed (some distroes were too slow for me)
I would have agreed with your post, that none of the other distros has just everything listed (from a to c) but I sure can not agree with the d item… Ubuntu is probably one of the slower distros I ever tried (and I pretty much tried all of those “big” ones, each for at least six months: Slack 2yrs, Debian 1yr, Gentoo 1yr, and a lot of six monthiers: Fedora, Mandrake, Conectiva, SuSE and now Ubuntu… in the middle of all that I found (right before Ubuntu) Arch linux.
Yeah, Ubuntu is great from (a) to (c). But basically every bit of distro above, except for fedora and SuSE feels WAY faster than Ubuntu 6.06… and arch/gentoo/slack just sprays dirt on its face.
Yeah, Ubuntu is great, I say it again. But it is one of the slowest distroes I ever ran into. But that is probably a price to pay for some features… too bad I don’t actually use them — ‘not for me’ material.
For me it’s one of the faster ones.
I had crux and arch which were a bit faster but for example mandrake was always extremely slow with me. Even kubuntu felt sluggish. Perhaps it’s the new gnome but right now both bootup and runtime are satisfactory for me (it’s still not perfect, but it’s not a “hindrance” as I don’t feel it)
I never ment it’s “fastest”. But I ment to say that along with the very good defaults (auto cd mounts, 1 program for 1 job etc.) and good NEW packages (forgot to mention, ubuntu has latest stuff mostly) if you add to it that (for me) the speed is medium to good I’m a happy user. It’s the 1st distro with which I feel comfortable (not thinking about “perhaps there’s a better one, let’s try something else” all the time)
There are lots of big egos in the open source world. This is not just specific to the pro and anti Ubuntu camps, but can be found everywhere.
A Linux user is not happy if you are using Linux, as long as you’re not using her distribution of choice. That user is also not happy if you choose to run another web browser than her choice. If you’re using KDE and your friend chose Gnome, you’re going to argue about it to death. It’s basically an insult.
Now to the more specific example: Logically, Debian users should be proud! The currently most popular Linux distribution is based on it. Instead–and this is expected if you have read the paragraph above–they become jealous and insulted.
I’ve seen this for a very long time now, and it’s obviously not going to change.
As for the reason why Ubuntu is the most popular distro, I can’t really tell. My personal choice was pretty easy though: it’s all the small details that just works as opposed to most other distros. For example the dedicated media buttons on my laptop. They didn’t work after a fresh install of Fedora Core 5, OpenSuse, or even Xubuntu. But in Ubuntu, everything works right away. Some day, other distros will catch up and I will probably look for other alternatives, because the thing is, your distro choice is not religion!
Edited 2006-08-18 09:35
Ubuntu has done well for straightforward reasons that have been rehearsed here and elsewhere a thousand times. Other distros could have done something like this – in particular, reaching out well beyond America and Europe – but couldn’t or wouldn’t.
So it is very hard to see how Ubuntu is “over-hyped”. Yes, there has undoubtedly been a bit of a swing in fashion towards it, but that would apply to any other distro, or any other gadget, in the same situation. It’s only a temporary wave and eventually things will settle down. The fanboi effect only matters if you are silly enough to take it seriously in the first place.
For me, two questions arise from the whole affair. First, is philanthropy a good or a bad thing for Linux, aka rich man’s toy or compelling platform? Second, has Ubuntu damaged Debian and if so does it matter, aka is the world’s greatest free software project doing just fine or is it so far up its own arse that it is incapable of adapting to a changing world?
A Linux that just works? I’d hardly call that over-hyped.
I use Ubuntu because I have no time. If I had loads of free time I would be on Gentoo (which I play with only on vacations
).
Ubuntu does a fair job at getting things set up easily. BTW I am running Edgy.
Edited 2006-08-18 11:27
All major distributions are very similar, none is better or worse. All companies behind distributions contribute to OSS at different levels. But the top two absolutely are Novell and Redhat.
That does a great job of gnome, unlike SUSE with it’s crappy menus with crystal icons that dont even match. Ubuntu have made the tweaks to make gnome that one step better.
There should be an icon database.No more default icons for unknown:-)
You must be new to linux.
another one bitching about compiler. Please check your facts. Ubuntu does ship a compiler in a configuration sufficient to compile eciadsl ADSL modem driver, for example.
Ubuntu whas one of the first distros where sound did work out of the box so to speak for a lot of different hardware configurations.Just convenient when you don’t have to edit config files and or poke around with alsa.
Put in a CD and changes are great the damn thing is automounted.
Connect a printer.Most of the times it’s automagically detected.
All trival things,but a boring routine if you have to go through all of them everytime you install whatever distro.In my opinion it’s not l33t but just inconvenient and boring.
How many distros can support itself?
How many can say they have the *debian/ubuntu/gentoo/fedora* amount of high available update servers?
How many distros give you updates regardless wether the maintainers have other obligations or not?
How many distros don’t semi beg you for continuation?
It not only the OS itself that’s paramount but a lot of other factors too.
Your mileage may vary.
I have run anything from FreeBSD, Slackware, Ubuntu and redhat desktop environments in corporate environments for the last 5 to 6 years, I do not use GNOME as the last time I tested it many of the integration parts of the OS did not really function so well. As a current Kubuntu user I find that it suits our corporate environment perfectly because it just works in 99% of the cases. Most of our technical staff have switched away from Redhat or other distributions to Kubuntu for one simple reason most things work and they do not have to fiddle constantly. With dapper now offering a long term support it just makes sense at this point in time… Allowing staff to focus on doing their job rather than making an OS work is a good thing from our employers perspective.
What hype?
It is amazing to me how much free advertising Ubuntu is getting from all the articles written lately claiming how over-hyped Ubuntu is. As an Ubuntu fanboi (I named my kids Ubuntulina, Shuttleworth and Sudo ;} ), I have to applaud all this free (as in wine coolers) press!
I haven’t been able to get either of the last two releases of ubuntu to boot on my system. I’m sure it’s very nice, but i don’t know how it’s better than, for example, Knoppix, Mepis, PCLinuxOS or any of the other Debian based distros that have popped up since Knoppix.
And forking is nearly always a bad idea.
A nice and growingly acceptable distro (Ubuntu) comes along and you have to tear it down.
You should not wonder why it has taken Linux so long to be marginal on the desktop. You are the reason. You constantly bicker between yourselves. KDE or GNOME? C or C++? Python or Perl/Ruby/Tcl? Mono or Java? “What distro? It doesn’t matter your sucks more than mine.”
Yes choice is good…bickering and stabbing each other in the back are not.
Your subject line is overly provocative. But as a long time fan and observer of OSS, I’ve got to agree with you a bit on that one. It seems that there is always a certain faction of the community which dislikes success. If any one disto, or desktop, or language, or whatever, is perceived as being “too popular” there is a ready caudre of people to tear it down publically.
There is also a latent dislike for any company that has the audacity to actually make money with OSS.
It is important to understand, however, that no one faction, vocal as it may be, can speak for the community as a whole.
Sometimes the open source fish bowl can be kind of embarrassing. But it’s what we have, and that is simply a fact of life. (And not necessarily a bad one.)
Edited 2006-08-18 23:24
Linux struggles hard to make it on the desktop and linux users flame one of its best hopes to ashes.
..choice becomes preference, preference becomes bias, bias becomes superiority and superiority becomes intolerance for anyone else’s choices
Sad really
Didn’t give a rat’s behind what their name meant.
I used it as there were really only two decent chices for ppc based linux distros: Yellow Dog & Ubuntu.
I HAD been using Yellow Dog prior to Ubuntu’s release but had been finding it difficult to work with(RPM based, better than no package management, but not all that great. Ihad also used x86 RPM based distros in the past, RH & SuSE but also eventually ran into RPM related difficulties with them as well…) so I decided to give Debian based Ubuntu w/.debs a try.
Baseline, there were FAR more packages available & relatively painlessly setup either by source or binary for Ubuntu. The tools for packaging source files into a nice neat .deb worked better than my experiences with similar tools for generating RPMs for packages not aolready in various repos.
The desktop was better organized, more of it actually worked out of the box, and as it used a newer kernel & power management subsystems notebook sleep, etc. and other peripherals worked more reliably out of the box.
(YDL ALWAYS involved a great deal of hand modification after an install. 802.11 NEVER worked without manual intervention.)
Today: Installed Ubuntu on another x86 machine, upgraded everything and it still all just works out of the box better than other Linux distros that I’ve used in the past. No I didn’t try other distros recentoly as I’m not really interested in the flavor-of-the-hour distro swapping. I rarely even recompile my own kernels these days or upgrade the compiler toolchain.
Ubuntu appears to be better managed and maintained by the developers than other distros I’ve used. e.g. YDL always seemed like it was in some sort of limbo, as the various mailing lists were usually more or less contributed and run by end users with a rare appearance from a maintainer or developer. Personally I’m surprised that YDL has survived. Ubuntu maintainers and developers also actively encourage users to participate to much higher extent that has been my experience with the various other formerly popular glass house distros…
The very popularity of Ubuntu also makes it extrememly useful as there are far more people actually using(and testing out) various items. There is a much better chance of being able to hit one place and get an answer or the necessary clue rather than having to find the best google search terms and hunt around a wide variety of sites on the web as was my experience with YDL in particular.
As to other distros and their complaints, that makes me even less inclined to bother with their distros as it seems to me, at least, to be mostly a case of envy/sour grapes.
One other point that Ubuntu offered that AFAIK most other distros don’t offer is that Ubuntu will mail(snail) physical CDs to people. Potentially for others this could be driving the popularity of Ubuntu for them. As the old saying goes, people who live in glass houses…
I used it as there were really only two decent chices for ppc based linux distros: Yellow Dog & Ubuntu.
What amuses me about YDL vs. Ubuntu is that for years YDL has claimed to be the PPC Distro and yet Ubuntu trounces it when it comes to support, and PPC is not Canonical’s focus.
Ubuntu turned out to be everything I wish YDL had been.
I paid $60 for my YDL disk and book and was bitterly dissapointed with the product. (And the ‘tudes of the people on the mailing list.)
Ubuntu is free as in beer and I like it so much (and get so much use out of it) that I make a point of donating the cost of one extra large “supreme” pizza 2-3 times a year. (And, almost always, the people on the forums are kind and helpful.)
Edited 2006-08-19 04:26
seems a difficult thing to master.
I use a mix of Ubuntu, Slackware, Debian, and SLES.
My first distro and one that holds a special place in my heart is Slack. It does what I need and does not get in the way but maintenance is a bit more difficult than Debian.
SLES I use strictly because it is officially supported by IBM on the platform I have it on. Personally I think the maintenance contracts are way over priced but so be it. where I need it I use it but not any farther.
Debian is on most of my servers. It is stable and pretty easy to maintain. Even for someone like me who refuses to allow automated updates.
My 2 Thinkpads and my powerbook (dual boot) run Ubuntu though. Debian and Ubuntu may be very similar but when I go looking for some guidance on how to do something Ubuntu is quite well represented whereas other distros are patchier in my experience. Further Ubuntu is the only free distro that officially supports DB2. I am hoping that the trend continues and more IBM products become officially supported. This is important from a deployment standpoint for some things.
Every linux has its good and bad points as well as its fans and detractors. Ubuntu has a strong community, financial backing, and perhaps most importantly… energy. Marketing and herd instinct do matter, look at the ipod. I do not care if Ubuntu came from Debian, or even is identical in every way. They are making a drive to bring in users and it is working. Documentation plus function are what I require and Ubuntu delivers it for me. Success does not imply an alterior motive.
Of course Ubuntu is overhyped. You need to configure most stuff from the command line and get howtos – just like every other distro. Try to get WPA encryption for wireless working.
I don’t see anything approaching something like YaST for configuration in Ubuntu, and YaST isn’t even that great. I don’t see anything like it integrated into the Gnome control panel or KDE’s control centre in the case of Kubuntu in the way that Windows or the Mac has.
It just isn’t the user friendly Linux distribution everyone pretends it is.
Just being curious, besides WPA what do you configure via command line? (What distro does) I do almost all my config there but Gnome seems to have automated tools for most things. I just prefer the command line;the Slack in me I guess.
There is the Network Manager Applet which some have had luck using for WPA by the way. just something you might try.