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Is Ubuntu a Serious Desktop Contender?

Posted by Cliff on from the land-of-the-heavy-weights dept.

Exter-C asks: "2006 was the year that a large amount of people started to talk Ubuntu as a possible contender for the Enterprise Linux desktop. There are several key issues that have to be raised: Is Ubuntu/Canonical really capable of maintaining Dapper Drake (6.06 LTS) for 5 years? I know this is not a new question but the evidence after 6 months seems to be negative. A case in point is the 4-5+ day delay for critical updates to packages like Firefox. Given that such a large percentage of people use their desktop systems on the web critical, browser vulnerabilities seem to be one of the core pieces of a secure desktop environment (user stupidity excluded). Can Ubuntu/Canonical really compete with the likes of Red Hat, who had patches available (RHSA-2006:0758) the day that the updates came out?"

1 of 463 comments (clear)

  1. [Ubuntu] Linux Ready for Everyone's Desktop by d3xt3r · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Linux makes a great desktop for people who have a high level of computer "know-how" or programmers but lacks the consistency and polish need to be anyone's desktop.

    What GNU/Linux needs in order to be truly desktop ready is consistency between distributions, specifially (in no particular order):

    1. A common pacakage format. RPM and DEB are both nice but the Linux Standards Base (LSB) has decided on RPM so let's all just use it. RPM is open source software, if it doesn't have something that DEB does, suck it up and add it.
    2. A consistent configuration layout. I should be able to log onto Gentoo, Fedora, RHEL, Debian or Ubuntu and find that the configuration files for a given application or system feature are the _same_ format and exist in the _same_ places on the system. Why does every distro need to do something this simple in 10 different ways?
    3. A solid set of GUI configuration tools. Following the previous point about a consistent configuration layout, there should be a common API for manipulation of said files and a set of GUI applications that can do common tasks without requiring a user to drop to the command prompt.
    4. A package manager capable of installing software that the user downloads from the internet. Users of Mac OS and Windows expect to be able to go to Evolution's - for example - website and download and install the latest version of that application. This _has_ to work.
    Actually, I could go on but these are the main things that are missing. However, progress is being made in a number of places. For example, FreeDesktop.org and the consistency it is setting for Gnome and KDE is great. Other things like HAL and DBUS are excellent as well. I think we'll see a desktop ready Linux by 2010 when the distros realize that consistency of the base system is the most important thing. Competition should be based on target audience rather than everyone reinventing the wheel.