What's so great about ubuntu?

[creedog]

Really, what is so great about it. I tried it (kubuntu) and did not notice anything out of the ordinary. Package management with apt is nothing new or spectacular and I actually prefer yum.

I was also under impressed with Suse as well for this reason, was caught in dependency hell and could not resolve.

Not bashing it at all, I would just like to know why everyone loves it.

 

[drag]

because it'll have 10x the packages aviable that Fedora core or Suse has. Enable the universe and multiverse repositories via the synaptic package management gui or from teh /etc/apt/sources.list file.

It's based on Debian, which itself has the most complete selection of packages aviable. Probably 14,000 or packages aviable by default. Right now I have a couple third party repositories added for things like libdvdcss and mythtv and I get about 19000 packages in a quick search.

And not only that, but Debian packages tend to be of very high quality compared to other distros.

Ubuntu has a small 'official' supported packages, similar in number to Fedora Core, but it's those 'unsupported' ported Debian packages that makes it nice and easy for most people to muck around with.

Other then that there isn't much special about it, IMO.

 

[logicmaster2003]

try XUBUNTU.. its super light.. boot time of under 1 minute

 

[Brazen]

*buntu is a different beast than Fedora. Personally, I prefer Fedora, mostly since I've been using Redhat since like version 7, so it's familiar to me.

I wish I could switch to a debian based system for a few reasons though: most other distros (eg SuSe, Mandriva) suck, and Redhat is becoming TOO COMMERCIALIZED. Ubuntu just makes things to dumb for me. It hides a lot of stuff from the user, but as a plus, it has some nice gui tools that aren't available, or as nice, in other distros. Debian has like 8 years of update support and is more geared towards the stability and reliability necessary for servers, whereas Fedora only has like a year and a half of support updates and is geared towards cutting edge desktop use. Fedora doesn't really have a good server counterpart, since you have to pay to get Redhat install files or go with something like CentOS (which I do now). I would switch to Debian, but I already know so much about yum and rpms and the Redhat way, that I don't care to learn all over again.

 

[Hyperblaze]

Many folks here recommend it, I'm not one of them.

Tried it out, didn't like it.

Not my style.

 

[IamDavid]

I tried Mandrake, RH, SUSE and a couple others.. Liked Ubuntu best. Not sure why... just felt better.. strange.

hope to be eliminating xp all together soon.

 

[pkme2]

My students use Ubuntu because of its ease. You don't have to be a super geek to use it with Automatrix installed, no updating required.
I had no problem finding drivers to operate all attached hardware. Having built-up some inexpensive Linux machines in the past months was a treat.
Recycling old PIIs, and PIIIs into LINUX Ubuntu rigs are a good thing. My students were up and running after a few pointers.
Something to surf the Internet, write letters and get email w/o the hassle of viruses or spyware is quite unique.

I use Fedora Core 4 and just got FC5. Linux is for those who appreciate it, use it or not.

 

[rasczak]

Originally posted by: pkme2
My students use Ubuntu because of its ease. You don't have to be a super geek to use it with Automatrix installed, no updating required.
I had no problem finding drivers to operate all attached hardware. Having built-up some inexpensive Linux machines in the past months was a treat.
Recycling old PIIs, and PIIIs into LINUX Ubuntu rigs are a good thing. My students were up and running after a few pointers.
Something to surf the Internet, write letters and get email w/o the hassle of viruses or spyware is quite unique.

I use Fedora Core 4 and just got FC5. Linux is for those who appreciate it, use it or not.

as well, their documentation is really thorough and the forum support is terrific.

it's a great go between for users who are still learning linux

 

[Seeruk]

One simple reason...package management

 

[DerwenArtos12]

For those that like *buntu but think it is a bit, simplified or even bloated, i would suggest taking a spin with Arch. I haven't used it since 0.6 so I'm sure a lot has chaged but, at that time I was amaized with how light and accessable it was. At that time started with a completely text based install, after install booted to a prompt and you could install a gui from there. Do not attempt unless you have a great understanding of the inner workings of linux and are very comfortable with command based functioning or you'll just never get it running.

 

[logicmaster2003]

AUSTRUMI from Latvia --> http://cyti.latgola.lv/ruuni/index_en.html

* very very fast bootup time ( under 1 minute)
* englightenment desktop/theme as default
* got firefox , abiword, gnumeric, etc .... almost everything we need EXCEPT GAM or KOPETE or AMSN

I've just tried installing to HD.. woooooooooooow boot time under 1 minute !

 

[scottws]

Originally posted by: Brazen
I wish I could switch to a debian based system for a few reasons though: most other distros (eg SuSe, Mandriva) suck, and Redhat is becoming TOO COMMERCIALIZED. Ubuntu just makes things to dumb for me. It hides a lot of stuff from the user, but as a plus, it has some nice gui tools that aren't available, or as nice, in other distros. Debian has like 8 years of update support and is more geared towards the stability and reliability necessary for servers, whereas Fedora only has like a year and a half of support updates and is geared towards cutting edge desktop use. Fedora doesn't really have a good server counterpart, since you have to pay to get Redhat install files or go with something like CentOS (which I do now). I would switch to Debian, but I already know so much about yum and rpms and the Redhat way, that I don't care to learn all over again.

My first Linux experience was with Fedora Core 2. I quickly arrived in dependency hell trying to get various things working. Though I hear that the dependency hell that was once so common with .rpms is now a thing of the past because of Yum.

Later I tried Ubuntu, albeit briefly because my wireless card didn't work.

Then, as you know, I set up some servers with Debian. I think I'm in love. Apt is absolutely awesome. I also tried a Debian Etch desktop on Virtual PC 2004. It was just as easy. The only thing I didn't like is that it feels kind of "old" and it's quite bland.

I tried a SuSE 10.1 desktop last night and wasn't too happy with it. It looked a lot more modern than Debian, but it took almost four hours to install and then my experience with YaST2 was extremely bad once I was in the desktop. Had to be some of the slowest software I've ever seen.

SuSE 10.1 ran wayyyy slower on a virtualized PC with 256MB of RAM than Debian Etch did on 128MB.

 

[logicmaster2003]

thanks for the early heads-up on Suse10.1.. I was planning on downloading/installing it but now I don't .. thanks again for your heads-up.

yea.. what I posted above.. Austrumi.. I would suggest you to give it a try.. its LIVE-CD but when you boot-up, you can install to HD. The default language is latvian but its really easy (via enlightenment menu) to switch to the other language which is english. It would be the fastest booting distro with enlightenment as default but I still have yet to figure out how to do something like "apt-get install gaim" and such. Theres no forum either !! I think

oh oh.. did i mentioned its 50MB ? thats always a plus

 

[scottws]

Originally posted by: logicmaster2003
thanks for the early heads-up on Suse10.1.. I was planning on downloading/installing it but now I don't .. thanks again for your heads-up.

Well, it would probably run a lot better on a real PC with more processing power and RAM (like your Linux PC).

But I truthfully did notice a very large difference between Debian Etch and SuSE 10.1's speed in Virtual PC. Debian Etch spanked SuSE 10.1 all over the place, and it was operating on half the total RAM!

 

[Seeruk]

Originally posted by: scottws
But I truthfully did notice a very large difference between Debian Etch and SuSE 10.1's speed in Virtual PC. Debian Etch spanked SuSE 10.1 all over the place, and it was operating on half the total RAM!

SUSE 10.1 disspoints in very way imaginable (apart from very easy XGL install )

It is slow (even on a 3300 AMD64, 1.5GB of RAM and installed on a 10krpm SATA WD Raptor)

What used to be its crown jewel YAST/YAST2 is now the single most frustrating package management experience I have had... Dependency hell encountered at about the 4th package installed, very slow, lots of missing essentials even with the more common repo's added like packman et al

Out of the box it was pretty good (verrrrrry long install though) and then within 5 minutes XGL up and running with decent hardware support (YMMV) but from there it was just a pain in the ass. Even tried SMART and APT on there, but it has been an ever decreasing spiral trying to get things done ever since.

Aint formatted it yet... but as soon as I need the disk space it will be.

Comparing SUSE GM and Dapper Beta.... you would think SUSE was the beta.

 

[Henny]

Ubuntu is OK but I prefer Kubuntu. Now I'm using Xandros and it's the best Linux yet. (however still not ready for "prime time")

 

[Basie]

I tried Arch Linux early on and had no luck with it. But, recently downloaded the latest version and the
install was much simpler and its a terrific Distro. I like it better than Ubuntu or kubuntu. Dont particularly
care for Suse 10.1 and I am going to give Mandriva One 2006 a try.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Originally posted by: Seeruk

Originally posted by: scottws
But I truthfully did notice a very large difference between Debian Etch and SuSE 10.1's speed in Virtual PC. Debian Etch spanked SuSE 10.1 all over the place, and it was operating on half the total RAM!

SUSE 10.1 disspoints in very way imaginable (apart from very easy XGL install )

It is slow (even on a 3300 AMD64, 1.5GB of RAM and installed on a 10krpm SATA WD Raptor)

What used to be its crown jewel YAST/YAST2 is now the single most frustrating package management experience I have had... Dependency hell encountered at about the 4th package installed, very slow, lots of missing essentials even with the more common repo's added like packman et al

Out of the box it was pretty good (verrrrrry long install though) and then within 5 minutes XGL up and running with decent hardware support (YMMV) but from there it was just a pain in the ass. Even tried SMART and APT on there, but it has been an ever decreasing spiral trying to get things done ever since.

Aint formatted it yet... but as soon as I need the disk space it will be.

Comparing SUSE GM and Dapper Beta.... you would think SUSE was the beta.

Suse 10.1 disappointed me too, but not with what you listed.

Suse is blazing fast on my athlon64 3000+, 1 gig of ram, and 7200 rpm ide hard drive. I mean seriously. 10.0 was decently fast, but this thing is more responsive than when I used Ubuntu.

Yast was never an ideal package manager. I can't believe you've tried SMART because its great!! I love it. Its handled all my updates and installs properly. Oh btw, a lot of packages have to be compiled for 10.1 so that's why there's not a lot like in 10.0. Like VLC is made for 10.0, but there's not one yet for 10.1. You just have to add the 10.0 repositories and not just 10.1. Apt worked for me too, but I like SMART better.

 

[wpshooter]

Originally posted by: Basie
I tried Arch Linux early on and had no luck with it. But, recently downloaded the latest version and the
install was much simpler and its a terrific Distro. I like it better than Ubuntu or kubuntu. Dont particularly
care for Suse 10.1 and I am going to give Mandriva One 2006 a try.

What is the latest version of Arch Linux and what type of machine can this be ran on ?

Thanks.

 

[thehstrybean]

I would love to use linux, but it's a pain for me to get my Broadcome wifi card working. So, I gave up.

 

[logicmaster2003]

wow this seems to be my favorite thread alot of discussions and opinions going on
on the side note.... late last night I installed CENTOS .. and heres what my findings:
1) it uses "yum install" which if find VERY SLOW as compared to "apt-get"
2) eye-candy factor : 9/10
3) it's out-of-the-box video player failed to play even AVI !
4) it's out-of-the-box audio player doesnt play mp3 by default.. you would have to do alot of work (alot of rpm, editing numerous configuration files which is needed just to make the yum install xmms-mp3 work).

I have uninstalled it already. The next hd-install will be : kororaa with Gororaa package cd I've burned Debian CD last month but havent got the chance to install/test it yet. Does anyone have tried Debian ?

 

[scottws]

Yeah, I tried Debian Etch as a testbed for E17, but I never got E17 working... I never tried installing anything like MP3 codecs, so I wouldn't know about that, but Debian has tons of packages available, and apt (the package installer) is great.

I also use Debian Sarge for three servers, but they are very basic installs. No desktop or anything. The servers are whole different animals.

In any case, I've had the best experience with Debian overall.

 

[jfunk]

Does Ubuntu have 3rd party stuff like codecs/players and acrobat out of the box?

 

[scottws]

No.

 

[Seeruk]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX

Originally posted by: Seeruk

Originally posted by: scottws
But I truthfully did notice a very large difference between Debian Etch and SuSE 10.1's speed in Virtual PC. Debian Etch spanked SuSE 10.1 all over the place, and it was operating on half the total RAM!

SUSE 10.1 disspoints in very way imaginable (apart from very easy XGL install )

It is slow (even on a 3300 AMD64, 1.5GB of RAM and installed on a 10krpm SATA WD Raptor)

What used to be its crown jewel YAST/YAST2 is now the single most frustrating package management experience I have had... Dependency hell encountered at about the 4th package installed, very slow, lots of missing essentials even with the more common repo's added like packman et al

Out of the box it was pretty good (verrrrrry long install though) and then within 5 minutes XGL up and running with decent hardware support (YMMV) but from there it was just a pain in the ass. Even tried SMART and APT on there, but it has been an ever decreasing spiral trying to get things done ever since.

Aint formatted it yet... but as soon as I need the disk space it will be.

Comparing SUSE GM and Dapper Beta.... you would think SUSE was the beta.

Suse 10.1 disappointed me too, but not with what you listed.

Suse is blazing fast on my athlon64 3000+, 1 gig of ram, and 7200 rpm ide hard drive. I mean seriously. 10.0 was decently fast, but this thing is more responsive than when I used Ubuntu.

Yast was never an ideal package manager. I can't believe you've tried SMART because its great!! I love it. Its handled all my updates and installs properly. Oh btw, a lot of packages have to be compiled for 10.1 so that's why there's not a lot like in 10.0. Like VLC is made for 10.0, but there's not one yet for 10.1. You just have to add the 10.0 repositories and not just 10.1. Apt worked for me too, but I like SMART better.

I am sure SMART would have been better... lots of people seem to like it. But the problem was that loads of packages were incomplete when downloaded using SMART. Suspicion is raised when a supposed 35mb file downloads in like 0.3 seconds and subsequently (and uncsurprisingly) throw back checksum errors. It could be the same package, on the same repo that another manager downloads fine. Go figure!

Originally posted by: scottwsYeah, I tried Debian Etch as a testbed for E17, but I never got E17 working...

Another plus for Ubuntu... E17 was pretty easy to set up on Hoary, haven't tried since