Ubuntu has been causing a bit of a stir in Linux-land recently. It arrived on the scene late last year, and rapidly moved its way up to become one of the favoured distros. I thought I would give some of my thoughts on why I believe that Ubuntu is important:
1. Ubuntu is a free, Debian, desktop distribution. There aren’t as many of these as you would think. Linspire, Lycoris and Xandros all have free elements to them, but are ultimately commercial entities. While Ubuntu is commercially backed, they have remained committed to it being free. Mepis is the other option, but is really only ‘semi’ free – the author would like you to pay for it. Libranet likewise. The other options are often liveCDs that have installation options, rather than the other way round.
2. Ubuntu is committed to Debian. Everything is going to be fed back into Debian, which is very important, IMHO.
3. Ubuntu is Debian that works. Perhaps like no other distro before (I know, controversial) Ubuntu has managed to do the majority of things correctly, and produce a distribution that actually works well as a desktop OS.
4. Ubuntu is competition. Fedora was fast becoming the main option for a free Linux desktop – Ubuntu has provided some much needed competition to provide the impetus for innovation. Importantly, Ubuntu seems to be providing a bit of competition for Debian, and will hopefully inspire Debian to continue to develop and improve itself.
5. Ubuntu is corporate. This may not seem important, and some would disagree. But I think that Canonical are going to try very hard to put Ubuntu on corporate desktops – which will provide some of (4) for Novell.
OK – this has been written a little more hastily than I intended. Feel the Ubuntu love!
Let the flames begin.
mrBen
I must say, I was fairly impressed with it when i tried 4.10, just awaiting delivery of 5.xx, Hoary Hedgehog or whatever they called it!
@Noel: dude… 5.04 has been released on April 8th.
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/504Released
Get it while it’s hot!
BSD users usually told that Linux distros are chaotic and they are not quality products. They weren’t very wrong actually. FreeBSD in example, using mostly all the same software as Linux distros do, still everything is very well organized, FreeBSD handbook 10+, installing packages(ports system, the whole package checking, upgrading, updating, everything) 10+, flexibility(choice between using source or binary packages easily). Configuring is like damn easy. Basically you can set up a FreeBSD system for someone. When he wants to set up an ftp he can find all about doing it from handbook. Now why i’m talking this. Well like i said people say that Linux distros are chaotic. Well Ubuntu is the distro that filled that hole. It is like pretty young but already totally quality product and totally free not like in example “Mandriva free”.