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I don't think it matters what brings users into the Linux fold, once they are there, if they have even half a mind of their own, they will soon look around and find other distros some of which will be better than Ubuntu. Speaking as somebody who has just recently erased Ubuntu from my hard drive because (imho, of course!) it is not as good as Linux Mint and nowhere near as good as Mandriva, then I don't see any dangers in their success although I admit it surprises me. Of course if the 'glint of gold' ever caused them to move away from an open source model then that would be the time to worry, but I can't really see that happening.

Lately I have the feeling there are more and more fanbyos who don't have half this mind of their own, just look at all those "How to... ...on ubuntu" blogs, while most of the things they write about are not distro-specific.

I don't mind if ubuntu brings new users to linux, but I just can't stand all those fanboys selling me ubuntu as THE linux.

Without Debian there wouldn't even be an ubuntu.

Envy is a bad thing



Nothing wrong with an enthusiastic supporters. What worries me is the lack of enthusiastic supporters of other distros. We're talking about image/face to the outer world here, making known you're there. The Ubuntu community of artists, programmers, bloggers, musicians, writers etc. etc. are part of the success, they are giving the distro a face.

I'm an Ubuntu enthusiast, what do I like about computing? Gaming. What did I do? Making an Ubuntu Gaming Site and wrote a tons of installation guides aimed at Ubuntu and made a game list, which have now atm. 3000 hits everyday and estimating triple of hits when this year running out.

Create something for your distro that give it a face is my advise.

Compared to most other distributions, Ubuntu is still the new kid on the block/blog, thus there is more enthusiasm for it and a more "auditive" community filling blogs and newspages and forums with news and propaganda about Ubuntu.

If you take a look at the folks at Debian, Centos, Fedora or Suse, they are more quiet because most of their users are long time users who probably don't see any need for cheering about their distro, that don't think that they need to start any new "hype-projects". They are happy with what "their project" has achieved and many really don't see any need to propagate e.g. Debian and to worship it and to convert other users to their distro. Or they became lazy (just like me).

If someone is unsatisfied with Ubuntu after some time, they will look elsewhere and might end up with e.g. fedora. People will flock to other distros sooner or later - out of curiosity, out of boredom or because of problems with distro X.

I remember that when I first used Red Hat 7.2, I was overly happy and cheering and one of those "stoopid linux-evangelists" (without even knowing it!). After some time, it became absolutely irrelevant for me which distro I use, as long as it allows me to do my job.

I guess in maybe three years, much of the "Ubuntu-hype" will be gone and another distro will be the new "in" distro with the "most active community".

Well said.

I think it is great that a distro like Ubuntu has been able to attract enthusiastic individuals like yourself, adding to what I believe to be an incredible marketing effort that continues to gain steam.

First, I'm glad that a distribution is good enough to pull people away from Windows and bring them to Linux (on the whole). Very seriously, it's what the community (again, on the whole) has needed. Linux has long been seen by many as the OS of nerdy college kids and and the very technically literate few. The tools have been there for several distributors to make a release which was that attractive and they just haven't done it. Ubuntu has done that, and I say good for them.

Second, I'm a Fedora fan. I run Fedora 8 and it works very well for me. But I also have an installation of KUbuntu on a desktop at home. It's good. It's clean, fast, and usable. I think a lot of tools in Fedora are clunky and the menus often reference the same tools. My mother-in-law who knows nothing of Linux can use my KUbuntu box. I'd never unleash her on my Fedora lappy.

I agree that in time many may move on. People like most of us who are willing to go out and fix the broken things. But, a good deal of people are looking at Linux as an attractive free alternative to an OS which charges dollars per seat. Why not use one that is efficient and easy to use?

I seriously doubt if any serious Linux user would ever touch Ubuntu again after a thorough Debian Sid experience (either via Sidux, or by other means).
Or, as they said some years ago, Ubuntu is an ancient african word which means "I can't install Debian"

You talking out of your ass again, scarecrow. Go troll somewhere else.

Dear mr. Artificial Intelligence,
this is a democratic forum, where anyone can freely express himself.
If you do not like this, then you can pack your toys and go play at Ubuntubeach.

Thats some funny stuff right there. I've done a Debian install when Debian wasn't easy to install. (thanks iph) I've done a Gentoo install. (thanks vampy). I've done a Slackware install back in the day.

Reason I installed Ubuntu. Cause its easy thats why. I want to look at email, read sites, chat thats it. When I do get the wild bug up my ass to do more I still can cause Ubuntu is still Linux underneath.

I don't understand some people. Bitch and bitch because Linux isn't becoming main stream. Then when you have a distro that is making headways they start bitchin cause its not "their" distro making the headway. People now a days never satisfied.....

Ofcause it's democratic. But your so called elitism don't suit you by trolling each distro you don't like. It's very arrogant.

I have Ubuntu 64 bit. It simply works, and that's what I want it to do. I don't particular want to have to keep jumping through hoops to get suspend/hibernate working. It's only worked under Ubuntu for me on my particular laptop.

Mandy, Fedora and others would never work for suspend/hibernate.

The whole idea about Linux is to be able to have a system that is stable, powerful and works. It shouldn't have to be a system where you spend all your time fixing things or living with functionality that doesn't work. Ubuntu has managed to do that where others have failed or can't be bothered to tidy it up and think the user will tinker around and fix it themselves later.

I used debian for a long time and ... use ubuntu now.

And please stop fighting each other, otherwise I will close the thread.

Sure, Ubuntu may be getting the hot-off-the-press releases and the popular headlines, but in the end, it is the Linux banner being flown. Ubuntu is a very good distro for beginners and experienced uses alike. Do I use Ubuntu? I tested the Live CD a few times and it did everything I need. Is Ubuntu in the same big league with Mandriva and openSUSE? I do not think so, but it may only be a matter of time.

I do frequent several forums and run a few distros on my machines. In every forum I always see "I am a noob with X distro, but I just left Ubuntu and wanted to give X a try." Some Ubuntu users are branching out into other distros as part of the learning a experimenting process. I think most of us in this forum have made a few migrations over the years. My point is that the vast majority of the moves from Ubuntu are to another Linux distro and NOT back to Windows. Mandriva, openSUSE, Linux Mint, and PCLinuxOS are getting new citizens every day in these migrations. This a very good thing. Ubuntu is not really stealing the Linux thunder, but is actually amplifying the thunder so that it is being heard more and more often. This is just the way I see it.

My two cents (or five with this economy):

I can't help notice the tags in the signature lines with all the different distros. Variety is the spice of life. I also am one who has tried and still trying different distros to see how they behave (or don't) with my particular setup. I have full CD tubes filled with different distros that I have downloaded and tried. Some work, some don't. Once I found out how well Mandriva worked with wireless and everything else I have, well, that is the standard by which I measure the others.

Just my thoughts,
Randy3011

LOL....

But... there is a certain truth... perhaps its about user expectations, perhaps its about choice etc.

One thing I don't like about ubuntu is lack of a root account by default.... yes its easy etc. but it also sets a lot of expectations...

We could debate the pro's and con's... or I could just say "This is the way *nix is designed...."

Ubuntu creates a lot of expectations about ease of install etc. but not all these are for the best...


Come on, its not exactly untrue.... In many many cases ....
I'm not saying that in itself is good or bad, merely that there is a truth to this.




I know where you're coming from but its not so clean cut.
Debian stable is STABLE in a way Ubuntu is not... its stable like Solaris/BSD... it is also a bit boring ... but to say its not fixed is wrong...

I'm writing this off OS-X Leopard... yes its nice and smooth... but it is not in the same league as Debian Stable for stability... (seriously)
Its not even as Stable as SID ... I know this because I have a SID VMWARE Fusion... (MM and stuff)... and I have to reboot or even power cycle leopard and shutdown SID first... because its yet to crash...

I see Ubuntu a bit the same way.... I love my OS-X .. but it can't be compared to Debian for stability.. but its a lot easier to use...
Ease of use is nice.. its not always the most important thing though....

(I use Ubuntu at work by the way)

The attitude of "stealing" the thunder of other versions is largely what is wrong- dead wrong - with Linux. It's like a race to be the most ElItE of the elite. A "My distro is better than yours" childish attitude. It is largely that attitude that is holding the acceptance of Linux by users in general back. Perhaps variety is the spice of life, but to many spices spoil any dish - completely. There needs to be a get together of the Linux so called "community" to centralize it's focus. I don't see a community at all, but a bunch of "I can do better than you" efforts that just happen to be revolving around Linux. Non-users get confused by all the different distros, hearing of so very many problems with only a few coming from each distro, and so they avoid Linux.

Just because Ubuntu is successful, don't decry it's success, applaud it. Support it. That attitude will bring Linux along faster than childish infighting. But the infighting is what it's all about then, isn't it? The need to be better, rather than to serve the public?

Many think that Linux is ready for the desktop. Well it is, and it isn't. It can be used, if you want to spend an inordinate amount of time messing with it. 95%+ of people don't want to have to mess with having to compile a program and then find the dependencies, or just to find the dependencies before they can install it. Making it necessary to do that is total stupidity on the part of the programmers and distributors of the programs. Absolute total elitist stupidity. That is assuming they do, or think they do, have the goal of getting more people to use Linux.

Then there is the terminal commands thing. Well, that's well and good, if you have the time to learn it. Back in '95 I was in a circumstance where I couldn't work, so having a lot of time I started messing with my computer 6 to 18 hours a day, and learned the DOS commands so well, I wondered why there was a Windows. However, most people have lives beyond their computer chair, and don't want to spend the time to learn all that stuff that is in fact unnecessary, if a serious effort had ever been made to get it all into the GUI, and not have system errors halt booting, requiring arcane commands to repair the problem before the system can boot. (I just had to reinstall Mandriva 2008 on a system because for some reason there was an error with it being able to recognize the partitions and wanted me to fix it with the command line - DUH! - Just BOOT, damn it, and then I'll worry about it.) Most people have no desire to be systems administrators. They just want to use the computer, and Linux is simply not ready for that level of use. No distribution is, including Ubuntu, but then again, Ubuntu is the closest, and will doubtlessly get there first.

If you Linuxees want to pretend to have a community, that's fine, but there shouldn't be infighting among civilized people, but rather a comming together for a common goal, which is talked about, but I see as only lip service. Stop arguing about which one is better, and make one that IS actually an excellent OS, and leave the others where they died. So far, I'll stick with XP, because it is a good - not excellent - OS, that doesn't take constant futzing around with.

How stable IS Debian? I tried it last November - whichever version was the latest then - and it couldn't recognize the FAT32 partitions on the computer with any sort of reliability. It would recognize one or the other or none, but never all three, or even two at a time, and I couldn't get that fixed, so I formatted the Linux partition an merged it with a FAT32, and continued using XP. What use is an operating system that can't recognize the partitions you have your data on? Not much, I'd say. It's not fixed.

Welcome aboard.
Yes, this attitude exits - among end-users. Developers are a different breed. They actually cooperate quite a lot. Mandriva cooperates with Red Hat, the Debian and Ubuntu community also share their ideas, everyone benefits of Red Hats kernel programmers etc.. It is only some end users that actually have this elitist attitude.
If this were so, then there would not be hundreds of different car models and manufacturers, there would not be several camera models, there would not be different airlines,... Variety can help to produce even better goods or offer even better services.
It is just as ready as Windows and OSX for the desktop. What isn't perhaps ready for the desktop is some people that lack intelligence.
Now ask yourself: How many people can administrate a Windows system? Very few can. Let two persons who are not technically savvy, who are just the "joe averave" install Windows and Linux, Solaris and OSX. Chances are pretty good that they will be unable to install ANY operating system. Do not pretend that Windows is easier to install. Most people simply forget that they get a computer with Windows preinstalled (and configured). If you'd get a Linux-system preinstalled (and configured) on a computer, then there would not be any "install-problem".
That's a joke, isn't it? Tell that to our sys-admin and he will die laughing. He constantly has to fix things on the Windows server and the clients while his RHEL system runs like a swiss clock.

PS: Do not confuse "stable" with 100% Windows-compatible. Stable means: it is almost impossible to crash the system or its applications.

dadwhiskers, there does exist a fair bit of competition among linux distros, which is what we're probably seeing here. Competition is anathema to Microsoft, but it's actually quite a healthy thing to have.

Also we linux users understand that not everybody has the time to mess with their system nor the mental effort involved which is why distros like ubuntu have come around - i'd say it's easier to do plenty of things in Ubuntu than XP, except maybe get viruses, the only reason XP is easier because of more industry support, which Linux is now starting to have.

As a car analogy, many linux users are hobbyists who like to tinker with engines and stuff learning how things work, but most people would just like a car that they can drive with little maintenance and even have the hood welded shut (closed-source). Now that viable "non-hobbyist" distros like Ubuntu are coming around, the scene is starting to change a bit.

Distros like Debian were never really meant for desktop use despite what people may say (having such a slow release cycle is certainly not for the desktop) and requires a fair bit of expertise. The good thing about linux is that there is a flavour for every situation, Debian, CentOS etc for servers, Gentoo, Slackware for hobbyists and developers, Ubuntu, Suse, Mandriva for the desktop and corporate desktop. Of course these are just generalisations and you can use distros being only limited by one's expertise - I've used Mandriva as a server for example.

For one I'd never dream of using XP or Windows 2000 as a server (and the server editions are priced way out of reach) so there's only one flavour available as far as i'm concerned.

Sometimes I've felt this way too, but let's not be too condescending, and not insult anyone. I'm just thankful that I get good money because of my willingness to learn, as well as thousands of other people who work in IT

+1 what arctic said.

There's also a healthy competition among distros, though many have diffrent (main) goals/philosophy/idealism so people can pick which one that fit them best which IMHO is nice. Sure sometimes the feelings run a bit high among the "normal" users - but afterall we're human like the rest of the world

AI is a little confused. AI is not human, he's Artificial Intelligence

An argument often often ignored by Windows fanboys when bragging about how easy their OS is to use.

Ubuntu has not quite achieved it... On one hand, I was able to connect to work via VPN using Ubuntu, Mandrake/iva always failed there.

On the other hand, Ubuntu 8.04 still has several annoying problems: Flash drives do not automount, third party products (matlab, crossover office) need tweaking. Install gives you a very basic system which has only a handful of apps. While many applications are available for download, If you are a beginner, you would not know about them.

Many (as in most) people like an unbloated default OS which comes with minimal stuff installed (the definition of minimal may be different for each individual - even in the linux world). So Ubuntu comes with their version of it but still have the most common tools/apps its people use. You may not agree with the choice, but it's easy to install/uninstall what you want.



...and the assumption you can do/mastering a whole different OS from the beginning without a little bit of learning? I don't buy that, nor do I think you do if you give it some thought.
You'll have exactly the same problem if you put a person behind Windows who never used Windows before. The person have to learn how to do things in Windows.


Offtopic: I have crossover. Click the .deb and it's installed and running - I don't see the problem here.

I had no problems with my USB media or flash drives? All LiveCD installs are going to be basic than compared to a CD or DVD set. Mandriva One is no exception to this rule either.

Mm... maybe you're right... I am spoiled by mandriva since I always use DVDs and powerpacks which have all the goodies...

With crossover, it installs with some some warning messages, as a result of which MS Offcice 2000 becomes unusable. Apparently a common problem, since it has already recevied some feedback on cxoffce forums. It now works for me after tweaking sysctl.

What do you expect? They only have about 700MB of space on the CD in which to put the applications, and most of the ones you would need right away are there. More than in a base install of Windows, and in some cases more than a base install of OS X even - I'm talking buy the cd, format you drive and do a clean install - most Mac's come with more software than is included on an OS X install disk that you would purchase from a store.How is this different from any other OS?