Ubuntu Linux Review

JimLynch writes "Pardon me while I pimp one of my own stories. We've got a review of Ubuntu Linux up on ExtremeTech. Check it out. Overall we had quite a positive experience with it, we think it's going to be a good distro as it matures. If you're looking for an easy-to-install debian distro, give it a download." Update: 09/27 23:25 GMT by T : Eugenia writes with another review from USALug, and a 6-page comprehensive Ubuntu preview at OSNews, writing "Gnome's & Ubuntu's release manager Jeff Waugh also had an interesting interview detailing lots of interesting tidbits. The final version of Ubuntu is expected mid-October."

Comments

Re:Not Debian

[dschl]

They contribute changes to the upstream Debian package. Some of their developers overlap. They have a page clarifying their relationship to Debian, and they recognize that they are a subset. It would take a profound level of arrogance to imagine replacing a distro as broad as Debian, and arrogance appears to be absent from Ubuntu, from the name on down.

You seem pretty hung up on the potential for a fork - odds are, we define the word "fork" differently. I view Ubuntu as a short-term, temporary fork, similar to the branches in the Mozilla project, where every new release is effectively a short-term departure from a frozen snapshot of the trunk, which returns to the trunk to refresh and renew on a regular basis. I also do not view it as the end of the world. Unlike rpm based distros, most Debian-based ones (or at least those that lasted, anyway, progeny, etc) do not appear to fork to the same degree as RedHat / Mandrake / ten thousand others.

You might find the following blog entries from Jeff Licquia (a Progeny developer) interesting. He's got a lot better perspective on the issue than most:

• Being Debian
• Ubuntu and Progeny

Ubuntu universe is a snapshot taken twice a year, without any security fixes or updates. I have run sid for several years now, and quite like living on the bleeding edge - I do not plan on updating only every six months, and I also don't worry too much if anything breaks beyond my repair skills - that is why /home and /var live on their own partitions. But Ubuntu fills a gap for someone who is not ready to deal with sid on a regular basis - who wants a different compromise of stability and freshness than the regular Debian release cycle.