Ubuntu is Pretty Awesome! Am I late? :P

[roosevelt]

I think I pretty much used all the operating systems out there... and not just from a regular user's perspective but also as a developer as well. Whether it's for the web or software... I had my fair share of issues with compiling, library incompatibilities, permission issues and all sorts of nuisance. In the linux world the nuisance are quite negligible when compared to Windows (ugh... I'm glad those sharepoint programming days are over).

 

I recently tried Ubuntu with QT... Sublime text, and started fooling around with apt-get and I am just blown away how nicely it handles the dependencies and still manage to provide a super UI and a helpful website. I never quite understood the correlation of crappy web design with Opensource... Look at the website templates of some of the opensource projects, ugh! Don't know why they make them look so dull and nerdy when they are all genius inventions! But not Ubuntu... he refuses to settle down for the traditional mindset.

 

How strong is Ubuntu really? Because when opensource projects are funded they kick ass. But as soon as the money starts to run out we notice some interestng changes. Remember the incident on CentOS? That was just embarassing!

[Growled Member]

I'm glad you are liking Ubuntu. It really is a good distro and it has so many good derivatives to chose from, like Kubuntu and Xubuntu or even Linux Mint, each offering different desktop environments but the same basic base underneath. I like it because it's easy to use and has great hardware support. 

 

How strong is Ubuntu really? 

 

It's hard to get stats, but most say Ubuntu has 3 or 4 times more users than the next used distro. Despite the fuss over Unity, it still is a well used distro.

[cork1958]

I'm glad you are liking Ubuntu. It really is a good distro and it has so many good derivatives to chose from, like Kubuntu and Xubuntu or even Linux Mint, each offering different desktop environments but the same basic base underneath. I like it because it's easy to use and has great hardware support. 

 

 

It's hard to get stats, but most say Ubuntu has 3 or 4 times more users than the next used distro. Despite the fuss over Unity, it still is a well used distro.

 

 

Part of what you say is good about Ubuntu is exactly why I don't really care for it.

 

So many derivatives, aren't there enough Linux "derivatives" already, and that 3 or 4 times more users thing is really just fan boy based popularity, IMO! Not meaning it's not a good distro as it is very well funded/supported, but it just has never blown my hair back. I've had a few times happen where just getting a simple update totally screwed up my install.

 

I always thought a basic install was slightly bloated too, but again, just my opinion on that.

[medhunter]

I'm glad you are liking Ubuntu. It really is a good distro and it has so many good derivatives to chose from, like Kubuntu and Xubuntu or even Linux Mint, each offering different desktop environments but the same basic base underneath. I like it because it's easy to use and has great hardware support. 

 

 

It's hard to get stats, but most say Ubuntu has 3 or 4 times more users than the next used distro. Despite the fuss over Unity, it still is a well used distro.

 

I actually like unity UI. It is good, fast, just might need to add some gadgets like win7 to the desktop in order to use on one of my dual screen setup

[Darrian]

I like ubuntu, but I love elementary os.  Of course, elementary is built off ubuntu, so as far as I'm concerned it's pretty much the same thing, except it's easier to just install elementary than to install ubuntu and try to make it look like elementary.

[Karl L.]

Despite the strong reservations of some highly experienced Linux users, Ubuntu is still a good distribution for beginners. Canonical tries their best to make Ubuntu as easy to use as possible. They want it to become a mainstream desktop operating system; therefore a polished user experience is high priority.

 

Your question about the "strength" of Ubuntu is somewhat ambiguous. I don't think it can be answered without a healthy dose of bias - especially considering the strong stigma in the open-source community surrounding Canonical and Ubuntu - but I will do my best to give you an objective answer. The way I see it, there are two aspects to Ubuntu's strength: technical and political.

 

The technical aspect of a Linux distribution is very important. You mentioned that you were impressed with APT. The Advanced Package Tool is a Debian technology. Ubuntu derives many of its key technical aspects from its base distribution. Debian is a solid community-based Linux distribution with extensive experience packaging software and developing technical infrastructure. Debian has been around for 20 years and is only gaining momentum. From that perspective, Ubuntu's technical base is about as solid as it can get. However, Canonical has been slowly developing their own infrastructure to replace parts of Ubuntu's Debian base. Ubuntu no longer shares an init system with Debian (favoring Canonical's own Upstart over the more standard SysVInit or systemd), the Unity Desktop Environment is famously developed in-house by Canonical, and soon Ubuntu will also be using Canonical's Mir display server in place of Xorg or Wayland. Each Ubuntu release is based on Debian, and therefore inherits most of the technical benefits, but many packages are patched to carry their own Ubuntu-specific code for supporting the software Canonical developed apart from Debian. Politics aside, Canonical has demonstrated a remarkable ability to develop their own infrastructure and maintain their distribution despite the ballooning number of Ubuntu-specific changes made to each release. Therefore Ubuntu seems to be on solid technical footing as of the latest release.

 

Almost as important as the technical aspect of a distribution is its political environment. Unfortunately Ubuntu has garnered a strong stigma thanks, in part, to Canonical's apparent case of "not invented here" syndrome. While the core Ubuntu developers employed by Canonical have become quite adept at developing the growing number of projects that Canonical has deemed critical to Ubuntu's success, they have also gained much ill-will - intentionally or unintentionally - by frequently clashing with upstreams on projects they do not control and requiring developers to sign a copyright assignment document before their patches are accepted into software Canonical develops. This tension leads to uncertainty in two ways. First, because Canonical owns the copyright to all the code in their projects, they are free to relicense them under proprietary licenses at any point. Most community-driven open-source projects see this as a risk and potential liability. Second, the frequent friction with upstream developers of important components in Ubuntu means that Canonical has to maintain their own patches for many of these projects. This takes away from time the core Ubuntu developers could spend working on other tasks essential to running a distribution. The patched software also has more potential for flaws if it is not modified by developers who are very familiar with the code, further increasing the development burden required to maintain Ubuntu. Once again, Canonical has sees this deviation as essential to their vision, and has arguably handled it well so far.

 

In short, Ubuntu inherited a strong technical base which its developers have augmented with their own infrastructure. Canonical is committed to maintaining the Ubuntu core and continuing the development of their first-party software. Ubuntu will move forward as a Linux distribution for the foreseeable future. It is up to you to decide whether or not you agree with their ideals and vision of the future.

[simonlang]

i think ubuntu is pretty strong. yeh, latest distros might be a bit bloaded but the implementation of easy package installation is great, many many websites provide now not only the download button for windows downloading the *.exe file but also the download button for ubuntu specific opens the software center and installs the app. i think this is a big plus as it makes it easy for basically everyone to install stuff.

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

I don't use Linux as often as I used to, but Ubuntu is still my favourite distro. I love the server version - really light, really fast, and just really easy to deploy packages on and get up and running quickly. 

[Growled Member]

So many derivatives, aren't there enough Linux "derivatives" already, and that 3 or 4 times more users thing is really just fan boy based popularity, IMO!

 

 

I was watching the Linux Action Show recently and Chris said that 3 or 4 times more Ubuntu users visited the show according to his web logs that any other distro. He runs Arch, BTW. From what I've read from different sources this seems like an accurate statement. Amazon's EC2 has many times more Ubuntu installs than any other distro.

 

Check this out:

 

http://thecloudmarket.com/stats#/totals

[vhane]

Some people like to diss Ubuntu because it is perceived as a noob distro due to its ease of installation as a desktop OS. I find this amusing because once these leet people get bored of optimising their desktops, they will start looking into running their own servers. And then they'll discover that Ubuntu LTS is actually very well regarded in the server world.

[Atomic Wanderer Chicken]

I had Ubuntu on several computers before, it was good but it required some technical things to get some things working. The interface is very nice in Ubuntu

[Brian M. Veteran]

2 points to note:

 

You will soon realise that, however nice apt is for day to stuff, the moment you get caught in a dependancy catch-22, you will hate apt for life. Dependency hell is a reality. It's always so nice when something depends on version 0.99 of a package, whilst something else depends on version 1 of said package. Version 1 of that package will often depend on a higher version of another package, which also has a lower dependency. 

 

Then, you have what Ubuntu has become. Ubuntu is very different to what it used to be. In my opinion, Ubuntu has just become a commercial machine for Canonical to flog services. They've made far too many decision which obviously focus on the commercial benefits, as opposed to the benefit to the open source community as a whole. Give Debian a try. It's more "down to earth" than ubuntu. If you use the stable Debian release, you'll be a little bit outdated compared to Ubuntu, but if you use Testing, you'll be a bit closer (or if you love loving on the edge, there's always sid!).

[Karl L.]

You will soon realise that, however nice apt is for day to stuff, the moment you get caught in a dependancy catch-22, you will hate apt for life. Dependency hell is a reality. It's always so nice when something depends on version 0.99 of a package, whilst something else depends on version 1 of said package. Version 1 of that package will often depend on a higher version of another package, which also has a lower dependency.

 

This should absolutely never happen to packages in the official repository (main, restricted, universe, or multiverse). If it does, its a bug. Report it!

 

To clarify, you will sometimes run into dependency problems when you try to mix-and-match packages from different distributions or releases, or when you are running the development version of your distribution. In both cases, the fault is your own. Mixing packages compiled for different releases of Debian or Ubuntu is usually a bad idea. There are legitimate use cases - such pinning Debian Testing at a higher priority than Unstable so you can run a Testing system with some packages optionally pulled from Unstable - but anyone attempting that should know what they are doing.

 

Similarly, Debian Unstable and the latest Ubuntu development release often have dependency problems. In the case of Debian Unstable they are usually fixed withing a few days (or sometimes hours) because they are the result of packages making their way from the NEW queue into the archive, or filtering from one section of the archive to another. In Ubuntu development releases, dependency problems are often the result of automatic imports from Debian Unstable, and they often last longer than in Debian because the Ubuntu maintainers usually have to resolve them manually. However, those problems occur in the alpha stages of an Ubuntu release and very rarely make it into the final release. Development releases (such as Debian Unstable or Ubuntu Next) are meant to be run by developers, and occasional breakage is expected.

[Growled Member]

 

Then, you have what Ubuntu has become. Ubuntu is very different to what it used to be. In my opinion, Ubuntu has just become a commercial machine for Canonical to flog services. They've made far too many decision which obviously focus on the commercial benefits, as opposed to the benefit to the open source community as a whole. 

 

 

Linux, by and large, is though of as a community project but there is nothing stopping anyone from become commercialized with it, which is what Ubuntu is attempting to do. I have mixed feeling about Ubuntu but they are certainly within their rights to do what they are doing. In fact, I hope they succeed, because if they do it will be a win for all of us in some way. IDIC. 

[CubeDweller]

Welcome!  I've run many OS's over the years as well, including some pretty weird variants like BeOS and a custom one based on Nachos I wrote as part of my graduate studies.  I really like Ubuntu, and while I understand some of the "political" friction they've garnered with the FOSS community, I do believe their vision for the future is solid.  I also like to write software in my spare time, and releasing for Ubuntu gives me access to a huge percentage of Linux users - from Debian down to Elementary, the packages just work.  And I agree - unless you're mixing in some not-well-maintained PPA's (package sources that live outside of Canonical's official servers), the "DLL hell" we used to have to deal with on Windows doesn't exist here.

 

As for Ubuntu's vision, I see a future where the phones we carry around are our only computers.  Slide it into a laptop chassis with a keyboard, trackpad, and larger screen and it's a laptop.  Slide it into a docking station at home, and it's a desktop.  Don't do any of that, and it's a touchscreen phone.  There is a movement growing in the corporate world of "bring your own device", and letting technology workers be more flexible with their schedules and office layouts.  Having a portable device with separate containers - one is secure and only works on the corporate network, while the others are used for personal profiles - makes this a reality.  I don't know if this will actually ever happen on a large scale, but it's an interesting vision and I hear CTO's in my industry talking about it all the time.

 

Finally, maybe it's because I am getting older, but I really like Ubuntu because most everything just works.  I used to enjoy Gentoo (and later, Arch) for its unlimited customization, and I enjoyed the challenge of getting things working just the way I wanted.  But it required a lot of tinkering and a fair bit of reading to do.  With a family and a lot of household responsibilities, I don't have the time I used to so I appreciate things that don't require a bunch of USE flags or rc.conf edits to work correctly.  As much as I hate to admit it, I am becoming the very thing I used to make fun of.   :laugh:

 

Anyhow, have fun!  It's a whole new world, and coming from Windows the world of Linux feels like being a kid in a candy store.

[Darrian]

BeOS was a weird variant?  LOL BeOS was awesome and a good contender, I was really hoping that it would get popular.  I may still get a cheap laptop to throw Haiku on some day.

[chrisj1968]

Part of what you say is good about Ubuntu is exactly why I don't really care for it.

 

So many derivatives, aren't there enough Linux "derivatives" already, and that 3 or 4 times more users thing is really just fan boy based popularity, IMO! Not meaning it's not a good distro as it is very well funded/supported, but it just has never blown my hair back. I've had a few times happen where just getting a simple update totally screwed up my install.

 

I always thought a basic install was slightly bloated too, but again, just my opinion on that.

You are just not used to an operating system that is free, and allows for derivative development. This allows for others to develop a version that can specifically run as they need. People can alter and add/subtract from the kernel as they see fit.