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Mad Penguin on Ubuntu 5.10 Preview
atrebuse wrote to mention a preview of the Ubuntu 5.10 Preview release, on Mad Penguin. From the article: " Every community has its heroes. From the beginning of time, we've all needed that special something to grasp onto and worship in one way or another. The Linux community is no different. Sure, there are a handful of people known as leaders or visionaries that people look up to, but what other altars do they worship at? The Altar of the Distro. That's the one I'm referring to. According to the DistroWatch page hit ranking sidebar, Ubuntu Linux has held the title of '"most worshiped distro' for quite some time now. So why is that? Is it because Ubuntu is just that good? Is it because the Ubuntu followers are just sitting there hitting their browsers refresh button on the DistroWatch Ubuntu page? What is it about Mary? "
What is it about Mary?
Mary's genes. I (and Im sure Im not alone here) use ubuntu primarily because it's essentially Debian.
Ubuntu should just rename itself to debain-desktop, and not just for the 'under the hood' reasons. A base debian system is just that - a very basic linux install (plus SSH); Ubuntu has done a damn good job of doing the same thing in desktop form. Office apps, gaim, not much more. My mother could probably figure out how to do basic email/internet/word processing with ubuntu without much coaching. Just compare the program menus on ubuntu with those of say, knoppix and you'll know what I mean.
Besides the good base app choices there's solid driver support, ease of install, damn good UI, and great marketting. Only thing I would change is out-of-the-box in-browser media support (vlc-plugin or mplayer-plugin that works).
Thirdly, Community based distros make it so much easier to find support answers. I deal with RHEL systems at work, good luck finding support answers on the web. How sad is it that its the year 2005 and Redhat still doesn't have an online support forum? Ever search for a Redhat support issue on google? Most of results that come are rh9 issues.. Its so much easier to use online resources with community based distributions, when I'm scouring for Redhat answers I find myself asking a simple question, "What the hell are we paying for?"
Normally I don't feed the trolls, but the narrow mindedness regarding what is good for everyone else (in Distro's, Window Managers, blah blah blah) is often not just limited to Trolls, so I'll bite.
Compilation is not silly for everyone. The 2 biggest problems I had with Fedora and RH was that although with apt and yum I had a nice updated system, I often needed features in packages (particularly the Kernel, PHP and Apache, from memory...) that were not compiled into the RPM's that were in the repositories. So I'd end up hand compiling these anyway... With Gentoo I set the USE flags I want when I emerge it, and thats it.
With RH and Fedora, upgrading was also a big annoyance to me. You can't just upgrade to a new release. With Gentoo I just point at a new portage tree and I've upgraded.
Community support is also excellent.
Each and every distro has its strengths, these are a couple of Gentoo's.
Just don't tell me compilation is silly, it suits my needs right down to the ground.
Yeah, yeah, I know. This site represents every Gentoo user, right? http://www.funroll-loops.org. Just thought I'd get that out the way for you.
Ubunutu is nice, but installing Fedora or others takes no longer if you do a standard desktop or workstation install (which only requires the first and possibly second cd). If you do a full install then yes you'll need 4 cds and an hour or so depending on your system, but your getting a hell of alot of more software then with Ubuntu (arguably a good or bad thing depending on who you talk to). Fedora is designed with both the server and the desktop in mind and so it caters to both crowds, Ubuntu however leans far more toward the desktop crowd (but being based on debian is usually just a few apt commands away from a good server too).
Fedora from a security point of view though is significantly better. Fedora implements SELinux, execshield with NoExecute and PIE (position independant executables), and programs compiled with FORTIFY_SOURCE. Those features greatly increase security while also helping to prevent future unknown attacks.(Note, I dont believe all programs use those features for performance reasons, only those likely to be attacked like public facing services) Fedora also gives you easy access to XEN (virtualization), GFS (Global File System), and the Fedora Directory Server. Both Ubuntu and Fedora are nice, and people must choose based on their needs, but in many environments Fedora offers, what I feel, are certain benefits. Fedora also tends to get out security updates as quickly as 4 days faster then the others in some cases. Just my 2 cents on the issue.
Regards,
Steve
What is this "Page Hit Ranking"?
It is a lighthearted way of looking at a popularity of any given distribution. Since each distribution has its own page, I decided to track the number of visitors viewing individual web pages. The HPD figure represents hits per day by unique visitors, the emphasis being on the word unique; the uniqueness is determined by the visitor's IP address. This prevents those visitors, not disciplined enough, from rigging the results by reloading the pages multiple times. The idea is to identify which distributions attract most attention and to rank them accordingly. This also introduces an element of competition and competitions are fun, aren't they? Admittedly, the page clicks by themselves may not always reflect the popularity correctly. They are also "seasonal", meaning that distribution currently in beta testing will often receive much more clicks than the one past the stable release. All in all, these numbers should, over time, provide an indication about the popularity of Linux distributions.
These rules have been implemented to prevent various counter reloading schemes:
Repeated page and counter reloads in short or regular intervals are not allowed. If you are inclined to set up cronjobs to repeatedly wget your favourite distro's page counter, then please do yourself a favour and go to see a psychologist. You need help.
All suspicious page hit counts will be investigated and any regularly reloaded counts will be deducted from the total count.
The repeat offender's IP address will be banned from accessing all areas of DistroWatch, including mirrors, for a period of 30 days.