Slashdot Mirror
Ubuntu Continues to Grab Market Share
slasher writes "MadPenguin.org discusses the future of Ubuntu and confirms Ubuntu's growing market share in the Linux market. Author Matt Hartley writes, "Now, for the biggest question: do high numbers mean that Ubuntu is the best distribution out there? Some will argue that this is an impossible point to make, as each person has different needs from their distribution. But for the sake of this article, we will be considering the average user, not the Slackware crowd, who is obviously much more comfortable within a command line environment than mainstream users."
But, two days ago you said this was pointless.
I'm so confused, I don't even know what to believe anymore!
But will it work well enough ? I can't always get my external devices to work with Ubuntu, and I am a sys admin.
so called "African Americans" with the help of directed advertisements on BET.
yo dawg, dis ubuntu cuz be da bomb, yo. pop pop gunshot, oh shiet da po-lice. whoop whoop.
I've had a much easier time getting my boss to look at it because when I install it, it just works... Also it's very nice play with dual boot for the skittish XP users is a good thing. They have it very well packaged, though that may be all it actually is, it's very nearly a deal closer with skeptics who hate command lines, but still should be learning linux for cost reasons. I have it on my host, and personally, I like it very much. (A quick vmware-server install allows for all of the windows one will ever need.)
Speak for yourself.
The next release will be interesting to see. Being a LTS version, I can see it spreading rather quickly and staying there for quite a while. It definitely has had a lot of upgrades since the last LTS flavor.
I think the main reason Ubuntu is doing so well is that it has a consistent and relatively quick release cycle, so it always has the latest drivers/software/utilities and more importantly, it has great package management build on Debian. That was always what I disliked about Debian, that it took way to long for programs to filter down to the stable repos.
Props to you Ubuntu and friends, I look forward to working with you down the road.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Personally, I've been using Mandriva/Mandrake for about 5 years, and I don't see anything that Ubuntu has that Mandrake didn't have 3 years ago. I'm not sure why Ubuntu is catching all this attention. Maybe I'm missing something really big, but I seriously don't see what makes Ubuntu so much better than Mandriva, or most other desktop oriented distros. I actually prefer Mandriva, because I find that the Admin tools are much better.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Still kickin' 0% !! Way to go, Linux !!
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2007/June/os.php
OS Stats
Fri Jun 1 00:01:02 2007 - Sat Jun 30 23:58:00 2007 30.0 Days
1. Windows XP 54432747 (81%)
2. Win 2000 3862599 (5%)
3. Mac 2666623 (4%)
4. Win NT 2511918 (3%)
5. Win 98 1571989 (2%)
6. Unknown 999498 (1%)
7. Linux 344807 (0%)
8. Win 3.x 78191 (0%)
9. WebTV 41986 (0%)
10. Unix 23485 (0%)
11. Win 95 19368 (0%)
12. OS/2 2064 (0%)
13. Windows ME 1773 (0%)
14. Windows Vista 81 (0%)
15. Amiga 52 (0%)
0.0001% to 0.0002%. Woohoo!
That's the question posed. Well, we only have to look at the market penetration of Windows to know that question is rather meaningless. Ubuntu is a good distribution. "Best distribution" is a bit presumptuous as people who would be interested in a Linux distribution have different needs.
I always mod up spelling trolls.
It's still 344807/81 times better than Vista. Man, it must suck to use Vista.
What does average user even mean? For the average Windows user, I'd say Ubuntu would be the best for them without hesitation. For the average Linux user, the question becomes trickier. I don't know that there is a well-defined "average Linux user".
That depends on where you look.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
VOTE!
This is kind of confusing to me that the excluded the 'Slackware crowd's preferences. If there exist Linux distros that the 'Slackware crowd' prefers (not rhetorical - I really am not aware of Linux user preferences), then isn't there scope for improving the user interface of these distros to make them more accessible to the common user and trump Ubuntu? Why hasn't this been done? Did Ubuntu make a rapid rise to the top and leave others behind? If so, they'll catch up I'm sure. Since the Linux developers community probably consists of more 'Slackware crowd' members, wouldn't develop their preferred flavor as opposed to an inferior flavor? These aspects make me think that Ubuntu might be considered superior to other distros even amongst the 'Slackware crowd'
One possible thing I am missing might be that ease of use compromises on functionality as a general rule (like Photoshop vs. Paint). Other reasons?
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
Maybe I'm missing something about this article, but it's very short, makes no real points and doesn't back up its claims. How can we ever know which distro is the most used? Distrowatch? Their methods are hardly reliable!
Sadly it seems this article has been written to get people arguing on social networking sites instead of bringing anything new to the table. Yes, I know: I must be new here. :)
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
For this particular situation, yes, Ubuntu's popularity does mean it is the best distro. Ubuntu is the first Linux that's had "mass market" appeal, bringing in people from outside the *NIX world, due to its easy of install and use, but also for being "hot" at the right time: when Microsoft is trying to shove a slow, bloated, DRM-filled downgrade called Vista on its users.
So even if Ubuntu isn't ideal for all Linux users, it has the opportunity to greatly increase the Linux user population, bringing more and wider-ranged development to the OS, which will benefit us all regardless of our distro of choice.
No doubt, the (*)Ubuntus are great distros. One thing continues to baffle my mind in the general Linux world:
Why won't the fonts look beautiful by default?
Why, after all these years Linux has existed, do we have to seek help from Microsoft with its fonts in order to have a desktop that is a pleasure to look at?
Why is it that there is still debate as to whether wizzard like setps would be good for the desktop or the server? On this point, a wizzard like setup routine to handle an application like the Apache web server would make things easier for a lot of folks.
What makes me mad is that those who have the skills do do the needful, still refuse to see what seems to be obvious. Time will tell.
One more encouraging sign hit the already triumphant Ubuntu community when MadPenguin confirmed that Ubuntu market share has risen yet again, now up to to some number that would actually make this parody much easier to write had been cited in the fucking article.
Coming with a hotlink to a recent MadPenguin.org article which plainly states that Microsoft Does't Care About Destroying Linux, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. It's simply a matter of numbers, despite it being a sore spot with Fedora and SuSe users who've failed to get over it.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict Ubuntu's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Ubuntu has won the hearts of common users. In fact there won't be any future at all without Ubuntu because Ubuntu is not dying. Things are looking very good for Ubuntu. As many of us are already aware, Ubuntu continues to gain market share. Take a cold, hard look around.
Debian is the most endangered of them all, had a much slower development cycle than many of us would amit. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Fedora communicy relations issues only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Ubuntu is not dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
If there were any in TFA, I'd have talked about the number of users Ubuntu has, made a few wisecracks about Theo and FreeBSD, and compared the number of Ubuntu vs FreeBSD articles on Slashdot, divided by the number of modpoints used. So let's just skip that bit and call it as done. Throw me a frickin' bone here, I haven't even had my morning coffee yet.
All major surveys show that Ubuntu has steadily risen in market share. Ubuntu is very healthy and its long term survival prospects are very good. If Ubuntu is to triumph at all it will be over Vista itself. Ubuntu continues to grow. Nothing short of a disaster could kill it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Ubuntu is alive.
Did I miss something, or was this hardly a review? Seems more like a few questions posed, a couple paragraphs of off-the-cuff analysis, and voila - it's an article. More has been written in the /. comments already than what was contained in TFA.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
Oh noes, teh homos are winning.
If its number of downloads, do they take into account the number of people who download it and don't use it because they find it lacking?
I've experienced Ubuntu, the last version was a little slow on my machine, and the software manager broke it once. The current version is mostly faster except with task switching, where it is still noticably slow. The software manager, thus far, has only managed to break itself when it crashed (getting some wireless connection related packages). I'm sure I'll get help from various sources on fixing the crash, but the performance is still lackluster compared to that of FreeBSD, and even WindowsXP, on my notebook. Windows 'just works' quite well for me. FreeBSD doesn't do as well in that department, but when there are errors, the output messages typically give me so much information, that finding a solution is usually very trivial.
So, while I've downloaded ubuntu a few times, I have not kept it.
So, back to the original thought (my experiences mentioned above are why I have that thought) - how do they measure their user base? It wasn't mentioned in the article.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
Summary: Ubuntu is the biggest Linux distro because I say so. Discuss.
How much did they pay slashdot for the traffic being generated?
That isn't a concession for practical purposes - it's a complete contradiction. If you can give a definition of an "average user" that is practical for the purposes of building a perfect everyman OS, why the hell do these debates happen?
Sorry, but you may as well say "Okay, everyone wants something different from a car, but putting such considerations aside, which one is best?". Excuse the overused analogy, but frankly what a ridiculous story.
Now, on a more general note: of course Ubuntu is gaining ground. There are a lot of people who want something that isn't MS but that works on their existing PC. Ubuntu is often proferred as the easiest to install and use for a novice. It's got nothing to do with it being the best - it just meets that very important criterion for the mass of Linux novices out there (my Missus included), and has the reputation to get their attention. There's no mystery.
Meta will eat itself
... though i prefer a kde desktop-- but that's what kubuntu is for. The great thing about linux distros is the shear abundance of options you have. If ubuntu starts sucking someday it isn't terribly hard to switch to a different distro. I've taken the path of SuSE -> Ubuntu/Kubuntu -> Gentoo, but Ubuntu isn't inferior to Gentoo- just a little different. SuSE.. well.. its become what it aimed to become- a bloated enterprise distro.
FTA:
"Then we have Fedora with strong functionality (dual displays, anyone?),"
Err , dual (and more) displays have been a feature of X windows since at least the early 90s. Not sure when XF86 and Xorg incorporated it but it was long before Fedora came onto the scene. Wtf is this guy on about? You can have dual displays on any linux install so long as your card and drivers support it.
I've completely switched to Ubuntu at home. For the most part, it has been relatively painless. My wife has had a few printing issues. I had to spend some time getting the wireless to work in our Dell laptop and I had to tweak our ATI card settings in xorg.conf manually to get a good resolution.
Other than those minor things, it has just worked.
I use our main PC as a studio PC. It has a M-Audio 1010LT card which worked, but it took me some time to get the recording issues sorted out. JACK has a slight learning curve as did Ardour, but no more so than Adobe Audition did on XP. I've been rather pleased with the free available software for studio use.
I've even used GIMP a few times to edit some photos. While I had to hunt around a bit looking for the feature I wanted, I haven't run into anything it can't do that I need. Photoshop was always overkill for me anyway.
My experiment at home to run Ubuntu on our laptop has turned into a complete conversion and I'm not looking back. I talk it up to anyone who'll listen.
Aych tea tea pea colon slash slash slash dot dot org slash
People like Ubuntu because they have a perception that it installs easily on the desktop and just works. This is like the perception that Macs are arty, and that Windows runs all old software and comes from a stable company. Whether others did it first, Ubuntu is the first to brand itself with this identity and so is gaining new converts. The question is: how many were already Linux users, and how many have newly-fled from corporate platforms like OS X and Windows?
technical writing / development
This is a weak article. This seems more like a cheap attempt to increase pagehits.
yeah Debian unstable is good enough, plus the non graphical installed is so tops now, 'crypted disk / lvm.
For anyone who gets an ill feeling when they hear Linux pronounced as "Line-ux" I get a similar feeling when I hear "You-buhn-two" or "Ooo-buhn-two." I haven't heard anyone say "Line-ux" in a long time and I think it's because so many people remained vigilant with correcting people.
However, at a local Linux user group, I still hear Ubuntu mispronounced. So I have to wonder how much vigilance will be needed to get people to say it right finally?
Ditto, got my family running on Xubuntu. So far it's working great.
The last three computers I bought came with Windows. None of these computers have Windows on them now.
Installing Linux is usually the first thing I do to a computer.
So while I've bought Windows a few times, I have not kept it.
How does Microsoft measure its user base? I see sales numbers fron Forrester and IDC, but couldn't MS publish actual numbers. You have to register Windows don't you? (I guess that doesn't count the cracked pirated versions).
I gues the real answer is that all of these methods are just eductaed guessing.
We were right! OS/2 can compete with Windows 95!
If we just hang in there, we'll overtake them yet!
"Click here to get the latest prices on Linux distributions!"
The author of the links doesn't really make a compelling argument. He pretty much states his opinion, but fails to offer any specific analysis to back up his claims. He talks about the numbers support his argument, but fails to offer up any such numbers. While I happen to agree with the guy, I don't know why he didn't take a few minutes to add in some numbers, rather than just penning some long opinion piece. Bla....
Still needs lots of work. I say that being a person who switched to Ubuntu from Windows in my home. I have no past experience with Linux other then having to start an app now and again. ;)
The set up went fine and soon enough it was "working"
I say "working" because it was and it wasnt. For example I had to search for hours to properly install the Nvidia driver and get my 1366x168 rez on my monitor (37icn LCD). Being that the primary use was multi-media, I also had to spend literally days trying to get the sound to come from all channels and it still does not work completely.
Over all, I am happy with it, but I have way more patients the average consumer does.
It's just my opinion but I really dont think most people want to deal with things like that. They dont want to have to worry about if you have multiverse repositories are enabled. They want to click something and have it install..not run a command script.
Is Ubuntu better then Windows? In some ways yes, and others not even close. Windows, for the most really does "Just work" and the best part is...I don't need to know how it works
That said, I only boot Windows when I need run certain programs or want to play games.
Why is there more than one linux distribution in the first place?
This is one of the most confusing things to new users. If they want to buy Windows, they go to the store and buy Windows. It isn't available from 17 different companies; only Microsoft sells Windows. There are a few versions (home, professional, etc) but the installation/upgrade user experience is common across all of them.
Imagine if all of the programmer time and effort that goes towards packaging and installation programs for the various Linux distributions was spent on something important, like fixing bugs.....
I know it's a good build and system, plus more are moving to it. But, does anyone have any statistics to show how much it's growing?
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
I personally don't think Ubuntu's popularity has anything to do with it's distribution. I believe it's due to word-of-mouth on the internet. Never underestimate the power of verbose users and fanbois.
In these debates, average doesn't refer the average needs of linux users, who, like you said, have a wide range of needs and use a wide range of distros optimized for those needs. It means the vast majority of computer users who use their windows boxes for nothing but e-mail, word processing, and surfing porn.
I've been using Linux for about 8 years (desktops and servers) and have tried numerous distributions (Redhat, SuSe, Mandrake/Mandriva, Slackware) as a desktop OS. As far as the desktop goes, here are some things off the top of my head that Ubuntu offers me that other distros did not at the time of my experience with them (which may have been several years ago).
#1: No nonsense software manager. Ubuntu's Add/remove programs system just works. No dependency nightmare, rarely the need for command line, no need to compile/mock around with make files (although I'm comfortable with the process) but if there is the need, the option is there. Don't need to signup to get updates, it just works.
- All of my hardware works. ATI card, LCD (minimum tweak needed to get native res), ipod, firewire card, cellphone through USB, digi cams, cd/dvd writers, etc, etc.
- Relative cutting edge and stable software versions, I don't remember the last time I had x/gnome crash on me.
- Great software selection through their reps.
- Sane directory structure/menus setup.
- Excellent community support / forums.
- Ease of installation (although most distros offered this as well)
Never been happier with a Linux desktop.
[alk]
I've been in the computer industry for 20+ years. I've pretty much used every flavor of Unix and several different linux distros. Needless to say I'm in the "command line friendly" crowd. I enjoy tinkering with thing and yet I chose Ubuntu. My main job, day today needs solid email, web browsing and office apps world. So as long as I have a good text editor for code, and those apps, I'm happy. Fedora was too much work. I had to think about it as I'm trying to do my job. It was bloated, way too much stuff running, different tools trying to update/install software that didn't work together (update manager - yum - rpm), one could run while the other was running and hose your database, etc. I need to reinstall the OS and after 4 hours and 5 CD's of Fedora I was quite unhappy. So the next time I installed, it was one disk, 30 minutes, minimal bloat and I've never had my software package management fail to work together. With Ubuntu, I don't have to think about the OS and the apps. I can think about my work. And there is still plenty of tinker room with Ubuntu!
Rob Miracle http://www.robmiracle.com
Obviously. And Ubuntu is no exception to that. On old PCs that have less than 256M RAM, you can't use the standard Ubuntu live/install CD. Laptops have always been a little behind desktops, making it even harder to find a suitable distro for an old laptop. If one of the brags of Linux is that old hardware isn't left out in the cold, many of the distros make that untrue by building for Pentium IIs at a minimum. Embedded is even harder-- there are few enough options that you can be pretty much stuck heavily modifying and compiling some sort of Gentoo style distro, or even making up a distro yourself. A 386 with 4M of RAM isn't a usable computer anymore, but it's not because it can't do useful work, it's because software has become so much more demanding. I used to surf the Internet on just such a 386, with Netscape 3 running in X.
I've been trying distro after distro, trying to find something lightweight and full featured not just because I have old computers, but also because I like fast response times. Slackware derivatives seem most promising, so have tried Zenwalk, Vector, and Slackware itself. Also tried Xubuntu. Next on my list of distros to try is KateOS.
Someone asked why Mandriva wasn't more popular. In 2 words, nagging and blinders. Mandriva by default points a lot of things to various nag messages, like the default browser homepage. Lot of the help functions launch a browser which, guess what? Loads up another part of the Mandriva web site with both a) nagging, and b) blinders, as in a search function that searches only Mandriva's stuff. Once you get tired of not finding answers there, you forget their help functions, and try your luck with a real search engine, or the Howtos from linux.org, or (gasp) the docs from the homepage of whatever generic app you're trying to use.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
So I RTFA...and it's one of the worst written ones I've read in a while. I'm not sure what the author is trying to prove, and his argument has no substance to it at all. I'd expect more from a 4th grader writing a term paper.
...they lack hand-holding for beginners."
Again...please tell me why users don't like RPM based distros. How do they lack hand-holding....especially with yum which in a lot of ways mimics apt-get.
Apparently he's trying to say that Ubuntu is very popular for the casual Linux user. Ok, that's an easy call. But in his comparison with Debian, Fedora and Suse, he says Debian doesn't release fast enough, Fedora has "community relations issues" and "SuSE 10 was strong, 10.1 was not too impressive, and I have not had enough time to take their latest release for a solid test drive..."
Umm...well that's one hell of a comparison there.
"RPM Based Distros Are Simply Not Popular With Newer Users
Add on top of all that, it's in their "Reviews" section. This was a review of what? Random words on a page? Then it ends up on the Slashdot front page...funny.
moi
Well that begs the question of what would you move to production? Anything besides ubuntu?
Ubuntu Linux's Achilles' Heel: It's Tough To Install On Laptops The wildly popular Linux distro isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially if you try to install it on a laptop, our reviewer Alex Wolfe finds. Come along on his Ubuntu safari, as he hacks his way through bug-fraught installation attempts.
Uh no! god no! Tag request: flamebait
I'll purportedly avoid reading any comment to this news item.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
...considering your signature... ;-)
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
There's another big difference-- Ubuntu is also significantly more bleeding-edge than Debian. Debian stable is good for a production environment because it's just that-- stable-- but it's also painfully outdated.
Can I just take an ubuntu DVD and install it over top of Suse Linux 10? I keep reading that Ubuntu's application installer is a lot easier to work with than Yast/RPM, and I'd like to give it a shot.
Plus, I have a shareware game that I'm working on, but, once I flop it out on the MS I'm going to open source it and it would be cool to get it into a hip distro.
This is my sig.
I was a computer programmer in the 80s, mainly on Unix type systems, so when linux came out, it
was more 'natural' to me than anything since CP/M. And, my first distro was Slackware, and
though I tried other distros from time to time, I always came back to slack. Probably the
longest I stayed away from slack was when I was using Linux From Scratch... and Beyond.
I'm preparing this post on a slackware system now. But, there have gotten to be so many different
apps out there, particularly multi-media, that the research and tweaking needed to get them to work
on Slack just wears a body down. It becomes easier to just try them on ubuntu. So, I've become a
dual-boot guy.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
that article was not very good, it wasn't even good. The entire thing lacked substance, it ended abruptly, and it did nothing to prove its point. At this point I think that this article is written by Ubuntu's PR firm.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
Dude, you know that Bambi is a guy, right? ;)
I run Xubuntu and rather like it. Yes, ubuntu is great because it's user friendly n' all. But that's not it's biggest advantage. Have a look at the support forum. It's really good. Questions are answered quickly and well. Folks are very supportive and helpful. It's that community support that makes me recommend ubuntu. I realize that many of the question asked/answered are not ubuntu specific (and there are a fair number of non-u linux users that post) -- but having the same distro does make everything just that much easier (and having that sense of community isn't half bad either). Ubuntu wins because of the Forums.
take it easy, but take it.
Thanks for summarizing the summary.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I honestly could care less which distro grabs the attention, what I do care about is that we finally come together somewhat and polish one distro to the absolute best it can be. The work can then be used to make every distro better, but it has to start somewhere.
FFS give up on creating yet another distro and let's make one as solid as possible, a true foundation. Instead of Linux Mint, put the effort into making Ubuntu that much better. Everyone wants their slice of the pie and attention in open source code, the part they miss is that they will gain even more if they are part of *the* distro that changes the balance.
What I would love to know is the actual sales numbers for Dell, after all this time they have yet to be stated. That would be a telling number, but I'm guessing MS has something to do with the fact that no number has come out yet.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
...the Canonical distros are nothing special. As a 24-7 sysadmin... I believe your second sentence there identifies you as someone that is not in Ubuntu's primary target audience. I think most Ubuntu users, including myself, will openly admit that regular Ubuntu releases (long-term releases such as 6.06 are somewhat different) are not really intended for mission-critical servers. If I have to spend half an hour rebooting my Ubuntu system at home and fixing the Xorg config file, I'm probably annoyed, but nobody has lost millions of dollars. The same can't always be said for production servers.I have been running Ubuntu for the past year, and love it. I had tried Redhat in 1997, and a couple other flavours since then...but Ubuntu not only was friendly, it KEPT me as a user. I will not be switching back anytime soon. Something in my gut does say, go against the grain and use something a little more difficult...but guess what. I actually like spending my time getting things done, and not figuring stuff out. Ubuntu is a fantastic distro, and so are alot of it's other flavours. Linux distros are like opinions...
Wow, so Linux really does run on everything! Even families!
when i decided to try linux, i tried Suse. i didn't like it. i tried FreeBSD, the install was as complicated as Solaris. i wound up using Sorcery/SourceMage.
now before i have to put on my flame retardant suit, let me qualify my statements. i had used MacOS until 7.11, and would not upgrade to 7.5. i had used NT since 3.5 (thats not a typo, i had to reinstall at least 3 times dues to kernel corruption), and once the hotfixes started coming out it was stable. i used BeOS, but when it reached the end of its life, just before the Dano 5.0 release, i decided to try linux. this meant a triple-boot system, using partitions on different discs, and using BeOS compliant hardware, much of which required special drivers just to work under NT.
Sorcery was the first distro that let me do it the way i wanted to do it, and SourceMage has continued that tradition. when considering a distro for a new computer, i tried Ubuntu 6.06 LTS release. what impressed me is that i was able to run the live CD on my work laptop, with all hardware recognized, and then install it to an external USB drive, and dual-boot it. i still run SourceMage on my servers, and probably always will. i know that its a PITA for all but advanced users, but that PITA contributed greatly to my knowledge of linux, and without it i wouldn't be able to: build a kernel; alter init; fix problematic program builds; and in general configure Ubuntu to my liking.
i recommend Ubuntu to anyone willing to try linux, burning CDs for them if they don't have broadband. and in my opinion thats why its become the popular choice.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
I am a computer scientist, and I have avoided Linux for about 9 years after some miserable experiences the last time I tried it in 1999. Last week I built a new PC and decided to give Ubuntu a try. I will admit that it has been pretty decent now that it is correctly configured. However, it did not just run, and took many hours in the terminal or with xwindows disabled to get it up and running. Furthermore, it seems to have horrible USB keyboard support. When the Gnome login screen pops up, my keyboard will not work unless I unplug it and move it to a different socket after a reboot most of the time (just replugging it in is not sufficient). In the other times, it simply will not load and gives me a mysterious BusyBox error which is only remedied by doing the same unplugging and replugging in my keyboard.
Firefox seems to mysteriously crash a lot without telling me it is doing so (it just closes). I assume this is just a Firefox issue since no other programs have crashed on me, but maybe the OS itself is not alerting me to the fact that programs are crashing.
After a week and a half with Ubuntu, I installed Vista for the first time (I was formerly an XP user on my old machine). So far, I am more satisfied with its usability and auto-configuration of my machine. I just do not think I should have to enter the terminal to fix anything with the cryptic commands. Maybe I am an odd computer scientist, but I just don't want to muck around with my OS. Vista installed all of the drivers it needed on its own. I had to do research and mess around in the terminal to get my graphics card running in Ubuntu. I really think that Desktop Linux has improved quite a lot, but as long as I need to go to the terminal to set simple things up or deal with very annoying bugs, I'm not really going to regularly boot into Linux. Vista is far from perfect and unnecessarily consumes an enormous amount of system resources for an unknown reason, but at least it worked out of the box after installing without any hassles and it at least tells me when Firefox crashes.
I've had a much easier time getting my boss to look at it because when I install it, it just works..
All the distributions are like that these days, despite Bill Gate's best efforts.
What you noticed though raises the more important issue. It's not if Ubuntu is gaining share from other distributions, it's if Ubuntu is gaining users from non free software. Once the user goes free they lose their M$ bad habits and blinders and then can move to other distributions without problems.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The main thing that turns me off about Ubuntu is that, like Debian, the AMD64 version does not properly handle IA32 binaries. Unlike Red Hat, SUSE, and other FHS-compliant distributions, Ubuntu is "pure AMD64." I might remove that objection if it becomes easier to set up the necessary chroot environment.
OS X has too many limitations for me. I love the command line, but when my wife wants to edit her webpages by hand when she's on the road and all she has is OS X, well, I really wish she had konqueror. A simple use of the 'fish' ioslave, and she would have a nice graphical view of the files on server over ssh, she could drag new files in, and click on html files to have them open in an editor and a save would save the files on the server.
:)
I look forward to getting KDE running on OS X for her.
I'll stick to kubuntu
People say that Ubuntu is easy to use and that it 'just works'. What they *mean* to say is that Ubuntu is easier than other flavors of Linux, and it 'sorta' just works...more so than what the Linux community is used to.
Ubuntu fans - try this....
Pop in the install CD - boot into Ubuntu, click the 'install icon'. Go through the install like you normally would. When you get to the end of the install menus and it asks where you want to put GRUB - change HD0 to something fun like 'BUTT' or 'HDE9' or "H0D" or "DH1".
Ubuntu will accept your value, then it will begin the lengthy install process, and you'll be unable to boot. I couldn't get back into Ubuntu or Windows.
You'll have to use the Ubuntu CD again - and unless you know how to use GRUB, you'll have to go through the whole install process again.
This is the INSTALL process, of the MOST user friendly Linux distro. It's a great OS, I use, I like it; but the market share it's grabbing is from other Linux users.
You won't like the answer, but it's in TFA.
It's more that Mandriva has something Ubuntu doesn't, something that drives people away. RPM-based distributions are not popular with users. That's because in spite of band-aids like Yum, the user experience for RPM still sucks.
Lots of people have been saying so for years, but the denial in the RPM camp is amazing.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Why is it doing so well? Because people want something like windows, something that "just works" while still sticking it to the man (M$).*
I'm still quit the linux n00blet, but I love Slackware. I love working on the command line when I want to change something with my operating system. That way I know exactly what a button should be doing when you click on it.
Some people just want their computer to work, no questions or configurations asked. That's the "Ubuntu crowd." I prefer to gain the knowledge of how to get crap to work right, so I guess that puts me in the "Slackware Crowd."
*Ubuntu, like Windows, doesn't work all the time.
Maybe he'll start offering people a way to pay money for it? It seems odd that it's easier to request a free CD than to buy one.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I do enjoy the careful research and thoughtful analysis that goes into a Matt Hartley post. Bravo, Slashdot editors!
Seriously, why does Slashdot keep sending him ad revenue?
This reply is going to be painfully off topic for some of you, but I believe that it illustrates a common problem. Qweqwe321, I have no disagreement with the point you made, however, the way you phrased it made me want to beat my head against the desk. (I'm sorry if it seems like I'm picking on you. It's not just you!)
The term bleeding-edge has started popping up in recent years as a more 'hip' synonym to cutting-edge, (which apparently wasn't cutting it anymore). However, the way you used it: '....significantly more bleeding-edge....', made me stop and think about how two things could both be bleeding-edge, yet one be significantly more-so than the other? In order resolve this literary dissonance and enable myself to continue reading, I had to force myself to accepted that even a set so small as bleeding-edge could still be arranged as more and less-so. Unfortunately, I then finished your sentence.
I beg you all, stop F@#king with my head.
S.
There seems to be a lot of people comparing Mandrake and Ubuntu and some going so far as to say they are the same.
However they are radically different some of the most important aspects (for me).
Mandrake is RPM and KDE (first at least)
Ubuntu is apt and Gnome
For me the package management system is the first thing to think about and for a desktop where you are loading and unloading this and that app till you are happy (lots of people comparing to XP as well) then Synaptic and friends are the way to go. I have always preferred Gnome to KDE so again I like Ubuntu over Mandrake.
Sure you can add in apt to RPM based systems but that is just extra effort.
On the contrary, I'm pretty sure Shuttleworth/Canonical can afford better advertising copywriters than that :)
Ubuntu's strongest point is it's Debian roots. In some cases you can
install packages from Debian's repository. You can also install the deb-package
tools and build missing Debian packages from source that will then be compatible
with Ubuntu (because they were linked against Ubuntu packages).
Finally, Debian is a possible upgrade path to Ubuntu. While there has been a bit
of a split between Debian and Ubuntu, they still share a great deal of code
AND a great package system.
I'm a complete computer geek and expert compared to the average PC user. I'm a total noob compared to the average Linux user. I've flirted with Linux distros (mostly RedHat, Suse) for a couple days at a time over the last 10 years or so. I never found Linux usable until I tried Ubuntu. Software installation, device setup, and usability actually makes sense to me now. If it took a "dumbed down" distro to show me that compiling and terminals aren't the way Linux has to be, then Linux advocates should be supporting Ubuntu.
I think ease-of-use is what made Ubuntu distro with mass-appeal. A friend of mine was using my laptop for a day, and asked me where I got the "skin" for windows from. I know he did not try to install anything, and used it primarily for browsing, but still it speaks volumes of Ubuntu's ease-of-use.
He's a confusing writer and has confused some points so you sort of get lost in the message. What is really at stake is whether Linux is growing and what distro is the distro driving the Linux growth. I think he's saying Ubuntu is at the expense of the other distros. So, what do you do? Do you politely disagree with him or do you do something about it? Is he just saying Linux is growing or is he saying that you can't grow your user base of new users with the complexity found in some Linux distros (such as Slackware)? Is he trying to drive these more difficult to use distros to accept a more user friendly model?
It doesn't matter who wins the market for Linux. Linux is growing at a very good rate. New and advanced users can and do use it and are very happy, even though some aspects of Ubuntu are left wanting. Unfortunately he doesn't indicate which elements of the distro need attention.
All in all though, on a feature by feature basis for most feature sets Linux does what Vista does and more and is better at doing it even with less powerful hardware. No, I don't want to encourage others to throw older hardware at it. If you can throw as much hardware at Linux as you possibly can. You'll make your life much easier.
There are great things in the world of Linux. The Linux industry is very industrious. We are all benefiting from the opportunities that the industry called Linux is providing the world. With an estimated 100 million Linux users there's potential for every kind of development, including commercial proprietary software such as games.
What the Linux community does need is a solid installer that is cross distro and universal and able to install offline. It also needs much better support for gaming. I use Linux to game and when a game is targetted at OpenGL they play very very very well under Linux. They have advantages that even Windows can't provide due to technical limitations that Windows has. As well, developing under OpenGL opens your market to other platforms, not just Linux--OSX, Windows and Linux are great markets for your OpenGL platform.
Granted Microsoft has used its monopoly power to stint the potential growth of OpenGL (and thus Linux), thus attempting to create another monopoly using that monopoly power. We'll see what happens in the future.
So, get those gaming developers working. Get those universal installer concepts down and get developing. We'll all benefit regardless of which distro holds the lead market share.
Good for Linux. Good for competition. Good for choice. Good for the world.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
After trialling Ubuntu for some time on a second machine, two weeks ago I migrated from XP to Ubuntu. I've been using unix systems for a while but I like a few things about Ubuntu. The package management is certainly one of them. The distribution also seems really committed to open source. The migration is going great; the only thing for which I still use XP is Photoshop Elements, and that is in a vmware server session.
On my second machine I now run Debian.
A lot of people go on about the slow release cycle of Debian. I am starting to wonder about this. There are actually multiple release tracks of Debian, and "testing" could be renamed "Desktop continuous update release" quite honestly, I think. Feisty Fawn was released with an Open Office package in which Base did not really work, and a version of Gnome in which "file roller" uses a drag and drop interface not supported by Nautilus. This has not impressed me. As far as I know, neither problem has been fixed yet. Debian is the natural home of "apt" and maybe Debian understands it better, with the three release streams fully taking advantage of it. One would not have to wait six months for such problems to be fixed, I think.
So I really like Ubuntu, but I am starting to wonder if Debian may have the last laugh, at least on my machines.
Oh, and the kick for me to finally get XP off our main computer: I bought my wife a macbook. After 30 minutes with it, I was embarrassed to be still running XP.
Just working with Ubuntu on a mac powerpc G4 titanium this week. Feisty apparently introduced a bug where the sound won't work on G4 titaniums (just titaniums!), I guess no one is ever going to fix that in the later kernels b/c G4's are getting older. Maybe if I was a linux guru I could fix that...
There is no flash for ppc users anymore, they just decided to stop supporting linux ppc users!
I'll still use it as long as I can get ppt and doc files running correctly (within a few hours command-lining), but if I'm in a crunch and I need something that just works, I'll be working on my XP desktop..
Wifi worked on startup, which was nice. Beryl is fun, but it's really just eye-candy.
Kharma is like a boomerang. Mine is broken.
My take on this entire thread is that Ubuntu is grabbing the market because it works for a MAJORITY of those who try it. The majority meaning joe6pack of the user community (in American technical terminology), not someone who could start their own distro. Over the years I've tried to get my family and friends network to use a variety of Linux distros, but Ubuntu or Kbuntu has been the distro most accepted. My take on linux is if you want to get hacking use Backtrack, but for the average web browsing, e-mail, music, and video, it's Ubuntu. Next year it might be different.
I used to run mandrake. It was my distro of coice before ubuntu, and when ubuntu 5.10 or whatever it was hit I gladly left mandrake in the dust. RPM packages are a pain in the ass, and mandrake had this habit of "upgrading" disk encryption tools from release to release that ended up leaving me having to completely redo my encrypted partitions.
But what really did it was the support tools. I tried mandrake, suse, redhat and fedora and ubuntu had the easiest to use support tools. Mandrake's support forums absolutely sucked ass, and the only alternative was to list a request for paid support in their "geek squad." I actually resorted to this once and STILL didn't get an answer.
I rarely use the support forums now, but when I have an issue its usually easy to find help via google. There's this thing called "critical mass" beyond which the money doesnt matter anymore so much as the simple fact "everyone uses it."
This word "outdated" in your context suggests an irrelevance. A kind of uselessness. However, that context has practically no meaning.
1. Does my production equipment reliably provide it's services? Then it's not "outdated."
2. Is the production equipment code in the security patch support window? Then it's not "outdated."
Instead, you and others like you casually throw out the term to disguise the fact the production code base you run on is less tested.
You also conveniently ignore the fact very few of us genuinely **need** to run newer code. In some cases newer code has a feature in there you need. But this is the exception, not the rule. Therefore, the decision to use Ubuntu rarely, if ever has anything to do with "bleeding edge."
You are married to your distro because the honeymoon is on for Ubuntu. I've been around long enough to remember when Red Hat pissed off a huge number of users with Fedora. Canonical will do it too. It's only a matter of time. (and money) Then what?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Even Windows ME has 22 times more hits than Windows Vista. The level of unpopularity suprises me every day anew.
Want to hear the voice of GOD? cat
So up front, I'm mostly a windows developer (mostly because I've hack around unix and linux variants since SR5 but I never made much of it beyond the very basics). I've installed Ubuntu recently. I have been very impressed how easily it installed on my system. I love the their own version of "Add/remove" programs. So for day-to-day web browsing, music listening, etc...I've found Ubuntu great. USB plug-in and play works just fine. SMB with my windows machines, works fine. Terminal services....wow.... But, it "fails" me on the development level. At home, I typically build websites and website related "stuff" using ASP.NET. I cannot find any development tools for ASP.NET beyond standard text editors. I've tried getting some of my windows tools to run under Wine. And that has been painful and so far not very successful for me. I'm def sticking with ubuntu for general desktop work. Matt
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
What exactly was "good" about this?
Nothing was actually said, so how can this be "nuff said"?
Markets are measured in dollars. Something that is free has ZERO market share. Zip. Zilch. None. It might be popular with just about anybody, but a market share is a fraction of dollars thay you make out of a total number of dollars that are available to be made. If everybody goes Ubuntu tomorrow and MS and Apple go bankrupt then the market for OS will simply be zero dollars. And Ubuntu will still have zero market share as it is still making zero dollars.
Tech-nerds can be so touchy when non-techies misuse tech-jargon -- and yet they're incredibly happy to mis-use perfectly well-defined and well-understood terms like "market share"...
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
Here's a few with their installer:
k agebugs-search?field.distribution=ubuntu&field.sou rcepackagename=ubiquity&search=Search [launchpad.net]
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubiquity [launchpad.net]
No. I mean *these* bugs:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-installer/+pac
This distro isn't ready for production equipment like Debian. Ubuntu is like AOL way back in the day. It's usefulness is limited and it's easy to out-grow. Try Debian if you get frustrated with AOL/Ubuntu.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Ubuntu Feisty Fawn - Was the quickest , easiest, and most user friendly linux I have ever installed. All the drivers and hardware were detected and "just worked" In 15 minutes I was up, ran Automtix2 to get all the codecs and extra programs (flash java etc) IT was so easy Nvidia graphics card and Wi-fi worked with no configuration, no cd's to install, it just detected the hardware and worked. Nothing to do with marketing (that's Redhat non Linux people have heard of Redhat - they don't know what the * "Ubuntu Feisty Fawn is ) IT was SO easy. I have been using Linux since 1999 and it has really progressed, grandma REALLY could install this and have it work, it's easier than windows even , no extra cd's to install no serial #'s, Windows Genuine BS. Just a quick stable polished looking OS. Since i put my Ubuntu machine on a line conditioner it has not crashed once in over 3 months of uptime (when i got the line conditioner because I have "dirty electricity" in this condo. Any one who is a beginner to Linux, this is easy to use with the GUI, Automatix2 installs all the extra stuff you need, and you can do advanced CLI stuff too, I built a LAMP stack from source code, also Asterisk from Source. Really it was much easier , and there is documentation for just about anything Ubuntu related. Jeff
One guy who'd argue that it's a mix of marketing and engineering is Warren Woodford of the MEPIS distro. Certainly he's said so a few times.
MEPIS runs #5 at distrowatch, just behind Fedora and ahead of Debian; it's been noted for years now to "just work", with an install that doesn't find and use all your hardware a rare thing.
It, too, has a debian base but is less conservative about moving to new packages and kernels. Indeed, in recent years, its switched to using the Ubuntu libraries rather than Debian originals because in that respect, it shares Ubuntu's philosophy.
But more than Ubuntu, it comes with codecs - MP3s play out of the box, so does almost all video; Flash is pre-installed, for instance. It's had a great installer since long before Ubuntu and some very nice management apps.
So it mystifies me why Ubuntu is 3X as popular; MEPIS has everything U has and then has more. I can only think U has better marketing.
I don't NEED to run newer code-- but it's useful to have. For what it's worth, I don't actually use Ubuntu anymore, since I'm now on Arch Linux.
Yeah, I hear you. Ubuntu's power management isn't too great. I think a lot of that has to do with the wonkiness of power management in general, though, because I've never had a version of Windows know how to properly put my computer to sleep and wake back up without crashing. With Ubuntu, I tried installing it on my Mac G5 and it decided to always run all of the fans at full speed. There are like fifteen fans in the computer. So it sounded like someone was vacuuming in the room the computer was in. Needless to say, I got rid of that quickly.
How the hell did someone coordinate enough users to tag this article with "matthartleyisagobshite?"
+++ATH0
Now just imagine how hugely popular Ubuntu would be if it didn't default to SHIT BROWN.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
What happens when Mark gets tired of sinking money into the project? Right now it's not going to happen because mark understands it's a money sucking blood bath getting to that #1 distro slot. But what happens when the honeymoon is over?
Well, Mark has set up the Ubuntu Foundation with $10 million, to keep Ubuntu going should Canonical not be able to continue supporting it for any reason.
no, the families are running on it... Soviet perhaps?
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
That factor is no longer in play since January this year, when Greg Kroah-Hartman publicly and officially offered free Linux driver development for all takers.
So what external factors are left to *not* give those specs to the kernel developers? How can you lose, as a hardware manufacturer?
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
* yes I am aware that some of the results are not applicable/don't support my end of the debate. Refer to those that do.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
This is FLOSS, lets not bicker and argue about who killed who, let's make it better.
That all depends on the users opinion.
The fact Ubuntu and Family are doing so well is because of their ease of use for the normal people who don't know how to use Linux or computers well. It also however, doesn't skimp much on the features and tools a normal Linux user would use. IMO
I myself started off on mandrake didnt like it (it was an old build and I didn't have the Internet at the time), and then moved to Gentoo, that was fun but compiling your packages felt like a pain in the ass. Now I use Kubuntu and honestly, I feel like I reached the perfect mix for ease of use while not being dumbed down to the point where it feels like a visual Windows XP clone.
...while it seems to make things just work, when something doesn't you're pretty much screwed (ever tried to recompile a kernel on Ubuntu?). Now, granted, I am a Slackware -> Gentoo user, but I do use (K)ubuntu on my laptop simply because I use the lappy for/with stuff where it really shines (i.e. wireless cards). Not to detract from it, but Ubuntu just seems a little bloated and clunky under the hood for my everyday use.
I've been in the IT field professionally for over 15 years. with experience in both windows an a variety of UNIX (SCO, Solaris, AIX) and of course Windows.
Like it or not, MS as 90% of the market for a reason: "they make it simple" the masses follow, than the developers than everybody else.
I scoff at Linux / UNIX geeks and purists who insist on command line interfaces just to feel macho.
Ubuntu IS the next Microsoft, just keep watching....
If there's anyone I hate more than stupid people, it's intellectuals.
I agree that Ubuntu is by far the best desktop or workstation distribution of linux ever. However, the one issue that people don't seem to want to talk about is Ubuntu's future.
Specifically, there's no way that ubuntu can keep doing what they are doing forever. Right now they have the financial resources of a millionaire backer to draw on, but in the long term that well will run dry, and Canonical doesn't really have any way of making money off of software they give away for free. If you look at the other large distros, they all either charge for the OS (RHEL) or charge for support and upgrades(Suse), but Canonical has stated they will never charge for Ubuntu.
The fact is that Canonical has no business plan, and isd essentially acting like a pre dot com bust company in their planning. My fear is that when they run out of cash, Ubuntu will run out of steam.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Fluxbuntu is going to be awesome.
The friendliness and overall competence of the Ubuntu forums is incredibly important to the popularity of Ubuntu - everyone will sooner run into issues, or just want to ask "how do I do X" questions, and the Ubuntu forums are great at providing answers. Another important point is the sheer volume of traffic and the provision of HOWTO threads - it's pretty easy to find another user who's had the same problem. Having said that, the general rise of forums for Linux is a great help - sometimes a MEPIS forum provides the answer.
Another reason why Ubuntu is successful is because it actually encourages derivative distros and helps with some official ones such as Xubuntu (XFCE, lighter weight), Kubuntu (KDE), Edubuntu, etc. People who want a completely free (libre) distro can use the GNU derivative (forget the name), people who want lots of proprietary codecs/drivers can use Linux MINT, all while benefiting from the basic Ubuntu core.
Apache is free. BSD is free. Linux is free.
PHP/Python/Perl is free. MySQL is free
then why Apache running on one of the operating systems above, using other applications above, have a market share?
If Apple and Microsoft goes bankrupt tomorrow, then you can be sure plenty of servers will run Linux or BSD based operating systems of the Enterprise variety - that means paid, and with support contracts (as many do right now). Also, I am sure some companies offer BSD support, and if not, some will. Also, Sun's applications which are now free might be free in that future but could come with support.
There are plenty of money to be had from a free product
I just wiped Gentoo from my box and installed Feisty. It is buggy as heck. Recently, there was a kernel upgrade that forced all PCs with ICH5 and SATA drives to not boot. http://dschneller.blogspot.com/2007/06/beware-of-u buntu-kernel-2620-16.html I have had tons of problems getting the NVIDIA driver to not crash; ubuntu has it's own nvidia-glx & co. modules, and I can't download NVIDIA's latest versions. I'm stuck with "nv" at this point.
Ubuntu also doesn't come with any compiler. You have to apt-get build-essentials. What is with that? Sooner or later (usually sooner), everyone has to compile something if they run Linux. Oh, wait. /usr/local is not in the default LD_LIBRARY_PATH! Looks like they weren't expecting anyone to compile anything, even though I installed build-essentials.
Now, I want to rip a CD. Whoops. ffmpeg is not compiled with MP3 encoding by default. The ubuntu wiki says that you have to compile ffmpeg to enable MP3 encoding. See what I mean about compiling?
What else doesn't work? Oh, the vnc package doesn't work. Only tightvnc works. At this point, I'm ready to quit and use Gentoo, which always works once you get the USE flags right and have enough patience.
I'm half-convinced that any binary-based distro will have a boatload of problems, since everything in Linux is changing so fast. What Ubuntu should do is to create an "emerge-like" tool; this will give people who can't run the binary an option to easily compile it themselves.
"not the Slackware crowd, who is obviously much more comfortable within a command line environment than mainstream users" I'm very comfortable with the command line. I enjoy working without a GUI. I like the sound of Slackware. I use Ubuntu because it gives out ree CDs, downloading it is too hard. I've never seen anyone point that out, and I bet that has a big influence on the number of 'buntu users. I've installed it 4 machines, used by about 6 users - and that wouldn't happen if I had to download anything big.
Canonical might be backed by a charismatic billionaire who can grab the headlines but that doesn't make Ubuntu any less useful to someone like me. Canonical could be run by a Martian for all I care. The simple fact is this: Ubuntu works for me. Everything else is just fluff. Perhaps that's why more people are choosing it.
For me, the timing was perfect.
.NET developer and sysadmin, I had been looking at cross-platform .NET development and mono was becoming popular.
... I felt comfortable in Ubuntu very soon after installing it. Same web browser / office suite / IM client that I was used to ... even the same programming language (though I've since moved to Ruby for most scripts/tasks).
... all running vmware full of smaller Ubuntu installs :P
... every other time I tried learning a distro, it was a task. I really had to put effort into it. Like exercising.
As a Windows
I had heard horror stories of how bad Vista was going to be and I was determined to become comfortable with linux before the release of Vista.
I spotted some news about a new version of a linux distro that I hadn't heard of before, which was apparently supposed to be great.
1 burnt CD and about 1 year later, I'm still on Ubuntu.
I've tried lots and lots of linux distros in the past, but none of them ever stuck. It definately wasn't the command line that turned me off, as I've always been as much of a command line ninja as any Windows user can be. Things "just worked" with Ubuntu. Plus the added bonus of being able to develop apps in C# across platforms
It's hard to say why, but I love it. Since I started using Ubuntu a year ago, I've converted all of my home desktops/servers to Ubuntu & I've setup almost a dozen Ubuntu servers at my office
It's almost as if
Ubuntu is more like eating candy.
The Dell has a "Designed for Windows 98" sticker on it - bollocks to that, it is brilliant with Puppy. Not only is it ace to use and fast, but it also works with my 3G USB modem for internet access.
Hopefully in the future we'll see "Designed for You, you lovely customer" stickers. Maybe that can be a new Linux motto and we can produce wee stickers with the penguin on it.
Anything that Ubuntu's (deserved) enormous critical mass can do to further the Linux cause, then that's good for all distributions. Even little old puppy will benefit from hardware manufacturers open sourcing their drivers for hardware. I feel bad now for leaving my old Dell Latitude in the loft for 3 years.
rd
Can it run NWN2, Planetside, WoW and MS Office?
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
The funny part is that we moved *from* debian sarge *to* ubuntu 6.06 LTS. While debian gave us no trouble at all, the team decided they would feel more comfortable with ubuntu. We had no problems at all with the installer.
Keep an open line with the hardware vendor to make sure the software you want to run will be supported. Ask them to test your software on the machine they are trying to sell you. I found out that certain vendors are quite open in this regard.
Generally, if debian is supported, so will ubuntu.
Regards,
moi
i've tried ubuntu, kubuntu, mepis, suse, mandriva, xandros, beatrix, knoppix, linspire and who knows what else.
PCLinux OS is easily the best.
computer users don't want to fiddle with command line, su and compiling software. they want a computer that works which requires and OS that works.
PCLOS works. i've got everything up and going except my wireless card from gemtek.
Ubuntu is very buggy, heck, i had to unplug the monitor during boot sequence to be able to use the full range of monitor resolution.
no such idiocy with PCLOS.
The posted article makes some observation that linux OSes that use RPM have a stagnating market share but provides no argument at all as to why, so I'd say that any intelligent individual would take that as an interesting observation and perhaps a subtle troll. I'm not saying that one package format is better or worse than another, I'm just saying that there is no supporting argument so the statement is just there to be provocative and nothing else.
.deb package but I have built my own .rpm packages a few times and found it to be a rather frustrating experience. I DO have to qualify that by saying it has been awhile and maybe it is better now.
.deb packages with credible arguments defending their position tend to be almost exclusively "hard core"/developer types--the ones who routinely compile tweaked kernels, do a lot of programming, author the packages themselves, etc. Therefore, I'd hazard a guess and say that where .deb and apt shine is in the developer's experience, not the end user's experience. If that really is the case, what package format your OS uses has pretty much no bearing at all on how successful it will be in getting onto users' computers. If ease of software development was the be-all and end-all of end-user acceptance then the Sony PS2 would've been such a dismal failure that Sony wouldn't have stayed
But ignoring that, I wasn't talking about dependency resolution. I was talking about RPM crapping all over its databases periodically, even to the point of refusing to rebuild them and needing a full reinstall.
I use mostly RPM-based distributions and would have to say that what YOU are describing is very strange for a current RPM-based distribution. I personally have NEVER had that happen to my own systems. I know that with the somewhat hasty release of v4 of RPM that there were some fairly serious reliability problems, but wasn't that a problem in Fedora Core about FOUR releases ago? That's like making an argument about how much Windows sucks compared to MacOS X based upon your experiences with NT4. Either you lack recent experience with RPM or you are having similar "unusual experiences" with an RPM-based OS that the frustrated Ubuntu user had with Debian packages.
Oh, that and the truly horrible UI for RPM, that necessitates keeping a cheat sheet around for the bizarre incantations.
This statement makes me think you really DON'T have any meaningful recent experience with RPM-based OSes. The 'rpm' program is no longer used for day-to-day package maintenance by the majority of users, and it is NOT the equivalent to apt nor was it intended to be. To compare varieties of apples you'd be better to compare to apt to something like yum. By avoiding low-level/technical tools like the rpm command line there is no need to perform "bizarre incantations" or keep cheat sheets.
I really do get tired of these weak debates and would like to see actual reasoned arguments as to why, technically and from a "user experience" perspective, why apt is better than yum or vice versa, because though I've played with both I haven't seen anything about one or the other that would have any meaningful impact on my choice of OS. Most often I don't do anything really fancy with my software package management tools--I install, upgrade or uninstall a package here and there, and BOTH have been "good enough" for that purpose--generally speaking, equally reliable and easy to use. I'd say the vast majority of users do nothing but that, and the ONLY people who would even have a reason to care would be developers who build and maintain the packages and repositories themselves. I've never built a
Anyways, since I don't have the "full experience" of both installing AND building packages I'll admit that I cannot say with much credibility which package format is better--and I wish most others would admit that too! The best I can do is make an observation that the most ardent supporters of apt and
I can see "Flamebait", but "Off Topic"?!? It was supposed to be "Funny", or "Insightful". WHATEVER!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
... how many times do you have to load firmware?
Dear mod,
What you find as funny I find as flamebait.
Scott
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