Why does everyone use Ubuntu?

[bcrisciotti]

Actually today i was wondering the same! Why? It seems to me like canonical is spending a great effort in public relations. Is Ubuntu so easy for the newbie? I don't think so. The lack of a control center like yast or mamdriva's one makes me think that is not so easy. Well it is possible to install software so easy. But it is the same like any other debian based distro. But if i want to set up a file server is it better yast or editing the configuration files? Actually i have to tell you guys that at the times of suse 7.3 yast was the deciding factor to make me switch to suse. And again Ubuntu is missing something like that.

[GofBorg]

> When I see this huge mass of people voting for Ubuntu, I really
> wonder.. am I missing something here?

Well while we are on the subject of opinions...
I think it's the freedom that Ubuntu promises.

'Ubuntu is and always will be free of charge. You do not pay any licensing
fees. You can download, use and share Ubuntu with your friends, family,
school or business for absolutely nothing.

What does Ubuntu mean?

Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'Humanity to others', or 'I am what I am
because of who we all are'. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of
Ubuntu to the software world.'

--http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu

So it plays on social responsibility and it also has shipped on a number of
hardware platforms.

I've tried it a few times myself, but using GNOME as its default is a game
killer for me as the KDE variant is usually lacking. I'm also not buying
into their update model.

[richyf89]

Originally Posted by hendersj

I'm a member of "everyone" and I don't use Ubuntu. Therefore, your
question does not reflect reality. ;-)

Jim

Very funny Jim

I can't rephrase the question, but you know what I mean. xD

[ken_yap]

Well, not everyone uses Ubuntu, some of us know better. They do have a lot of market share, partly due to publicity and targeting Windows deserters, and they do have ease of version upgrade, something that's just made it into zypper.

Honestly in some cases if I were setting somebody up with a no-cost Internet browsing computer, I would seriously consider K/ubuntu because it would be easier for them to get someone else to give them help if I am not around, and it would be easy for them to upgrade.

Why would you want everybody to use one distro anyway? Horses for courses. Otherwise we're back to the one size fits all dumbed down Windows. If Ubuntu didn't exist it would have to be invented. Before Ubuntu, RH was the market leader in the distro field, simply because of first mover advantage.

Anyway it's all Linux under the skin and once you have learnt one, you have learnt 90% of all the other distros.

[richyf89]

I have no problem with Ubuntu. Nothing against Ubuntu.

I'm just wondering why its off the charts that all. Feels like a very over hyped distro.

I'm downloading the latest version now, I'm going to install it on a spare computer give it some intense use and see what the hype is about

When I was using opensuse 10.3 it didn't have my WLAN card drivers so I had to use the windows driver with ndiswrapper. After we all requested it, to my surprise, they had it working in Opensuse 11. So I think the developers really do take in what the community is asking for here and I like that.

However for Ubuntu, if I want to use the Internet I'm still going to have to use ndiswrapper and the windows driver

I know Ubuntu promises to always be free of charge.. but I don't think Novell are going to ever charge for their opensuse linux, please don't scare me. Someone confirm that they will never do this!!!

Thanks for the input everyone. Its really interesting to hear your opinions.

[ken_yap]

Originally Posted by richyf89

I know Ubuntu promises to always be free of charge.. but I don't think Novell are going to ever charge for their opensuse linux, please don't scare me. Someone confirm that they will never do this!!!

Why would they do an insane thing like that?

1. Everybody gets mad at them and they lose their loyal developer and user base.

2. As it's Open Source, somebody will promptly fork the distro and carry on.

3. And anyway OpenSUSE has been properly set up as a community distro.

[richyf89]

Originally Posted by ken_yap

Why would they do an insane thing like that?

1. Everybody gets mad at them and they lose their loyal developer and user base.

2. As it's Open Source, somebody will promptly fork the distro and carry on.

3. And anyway OpenSUSE has been properly set up as a community distro.

Hah! well crazy things have happened in past! No matter how unlikely, there is always a possibility. Unless you have a sealed promise

I think the Novell deal with Microsoft was a tad insane and lost a portion of their user base.. but maybe it has some advantages.

[freedguy]

I think the biggest reason for Ubuntu's success is its shipit stuff. Asia, Africa and South America have huge growing computer users and they prefer Ubuntu over other distros 'cos of this shipit thing. This pic says it all: Image:2005broadband subscribers.PNG - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[buckesfeld]

* richyf89 wrote, On 09/25/2008 09:06 PM:
> I did try and use it but it I just naturally didn't like it.
>
> When I first used opensuse "Wow!" I loved it!

Hey, your question was why people use Ubuntu :-)

> Explanations people.. Apart from its great community, I do find answers
> there sometimes.

Well, here in Germany, Ubuntu has an awesome German support forum with a gigantic user base. Though Suse originally was a German company, their staff stuck (and still sticks) to mailing lists for communication. You could get some good support via NNTP, but the German web based forums never took off. In short: The distro lost the connection to young users who use web forums almost exclusively.

> I love opensuses package manager, its organization, its ease of use (1
> click installs), its neat and tidiness, the computer menu and its jam
> packed with stuff.

Next important point: I think it was with 10.1 when Suse came with the ZMD package management disaster. Suse users were left with a software management tool which plain didn't work. People ran away from Suse for a very good reason. Opensuse 11 has the potential to get back those users with Yast/zypper.
IMHO, but that's just a theory, it was too early for KDE4: A lot of die-hard Gnome users were curious and tried the Opensuse 11 version of KDE4 and were disappointed, hence ran back to Ubuntu.


Uwe

[ken_yap]

Originally Posted by richyf89

Hah! well crazy things have happened in past! No matter how unlikely, there is always a possibility. Unless you have a sealed promise

The open source nature of the software is your best guarantee.