Why does everyone use Ubuntu?

[RJWEcology]

I have a live CD of the current Ubuntu distro and I'm not a huge fan. I just don't like the way it's arranged. I'll be sticking with openSUSE for a while I think.

[freedguy]

Ubuntu is not the best distro.

But its the best in marketing. For example those crazy version names (gutsy gibbon, hardy heron etc ) and wubi, a windows installer which installs Ubuntu just as any other windows app.

[freedguy]

Uwe, what about LINUX Club ? Great German forum and the majority of stuff there is about opensuse.

[john_markh]

From my experience, Ubuntu community is much more active and I think, larger. In addition, apt-get (or aptitude/Synaptic) are superior to Yast package manager. openSuse has it own advantages over Ubuntu, but for someone who is trying to switch from M$ support will be one of the most important issues.

[69_rs_ss]

john markh wrote:
> From my experience, Ubuntu community is much more active and I think,
> larger.
Why do you think they are more active? They definately have a bigger
forum community but remember that the openSUSE forum community was split
until a few months ago.
> In addition, apt-get (or aptitude/Synaptic) are superior to Yast
> package manager.
Care to explain why? They both seem to do the exact same job with the
exact same dependability for me.
> openSuse has it own advantages over Ubuntu, but for
> someone who is trying to switch from M$ support will be one of the most
> important issues.
So I guess you think the support here is lacking?

[dragonbite]

Ubuntu has a number of things going for it

1. LiveCD works very well so it is easy to spread around and get people to try it
2. ShipIT gets it in the hands of people who do not have high-speed internet (such as myself when I started using it)
3. They do a number of things to make it easier for the user.
   For example I have had Edubuntu, Ubuntu, Windows XP, openSUSE and CentOS on my home network at one time or another. The *buntu's have all been visible to my Windows XP machine in Network Neighborhood while openSUSE still doesn't show up. CentOS did alright, but it would dissappear after a while. Tweaks like this makes it work more closely to what users coming from Windows expects.
4. Brown. It isn't as nice as Green, but it isn't blue like most distros.
5. Forums are well monitored and questions are usually answered in reasonable time.
6. Forums are very active.
   I frequent both this and Ubuntu forums and see more postings appearing in the same time span. I have some openSUSE forums categories RSS fed into my Outlook but I cannot do that to a similar Ubuntu forum because it updates too many too fast.
7. Wiki is usually pretty good, though it is getting a little filled up so you have too many similar pages to weed through for your specific item.
8. Ubuntu focuses on making Gnome as good as they can while Kubuntu focuses on building upon Ubuntu's strengths and converting it to KDE, Xubuntu does the same with Xfce so they are more focused (though Kubuntu does not hold a light to openSUSE's KDE implementation)
9. Ubuntu has built its userbase, and then between Shipit, Local groups, blogs, easy LiveCDs, blogs, etc. they have built a marketing ecosystem that pushes Ubuntu along.. which builds it's ecosystem further and further
10. After getting the Ubuntu Server CD from ShipIT I have been contacted twice regarding feedback on how I use it and how it works.
11. The logo is easily identifiable and simple.
12. Cute names to keep track of versions. Most people don't care about number releases, but ***** (-er, I mean Hardy) Heron is easier to remember and can be refered to as 8.04, Hardy, Heron or Hardy Heron for easy identification.
13. Ubuntu held onto my wireless connection for a few hours,
    openSUSE would lose the connection and not be able to re-connect even though the laptop hasn't moved from it's location and nothing has change in the physical world.
    

I remember, though, before I tried Ubuntu I found Ubuntu fans to be obnoxious, zealous ba-foons.

Now I am seeing PCLinuxOS fans taking that category. Does this mean PCLOS is the next "hot ticket"?

OpenSUSE has a lot going for it, and while Ubuntu may get people "in the door", when they are ready for more then openSUSE is a logical step.

Sorry for the long post.

[incognito9]

The two main things that, IMHO, led to Ubuntu's popularity:

1) The Live CD, which you can also get by mail for free. They may not have been the first distro to have this technology, but they were close to the cutting edge there. That alowed casual users as well as executives (like at Dell for instance) to try out the distro and see how it worked.

2) APT -- apt-get matured much, much earlier than YAST or Smart. Though YAST is great now, in the past it had a lot of trouble with deps.

These two things led to some high profile companies, like Dell, offering it preinstalled. That must have perked up the curiosity of many people-- after all, if Dell thinks they can get away with pre-installing it, then that must be the distro I want to check out if I'm interested in linux, right?

[kestal]

Well, I just switched from Ubuntu (today was my last day using it, actually) due to frustrations with my ATI video card.

Personally, I think it is still one of the best distro's out there. Its easy to use, everything is simple and such, a great way to start learning.

The things I did not like, was stability. Firefox kept crashing on me randomly (on google, of all places), and my I had a flickering problem with OpenGL that nobody could figure out pretty much (even though it JUST happened on Ubuntu, and not Xubuntu, Kubuntu, etc).

--

However, when I tried OpenSUSE for the first time, I was 'wow'. If anything, the only thing I could mention negatively thus far was the fact that I could not install single packages in a custom installation prior to actually installing the distrobution. Personally, I would have preferred to choose exactly what came with it, as OpenSUSE 11 did seem a bit bloated on first boot. I had to spend an hour or so removing packages that I would never use.

Other than that, it looks pretty solid.
(mind you, I installed it from the DVD - but still)

[richyf89]

dragonbite, that was a brilliant way of explaining things! Thanks for the input everyone. It seems this is a subject that gets to a lot of people..

When I first went into the world of linux I always noticed Ubuntu was at the top of the search engines. They defiantly have a nack at luring people in.. It was one of the first operating systems I went to install. I gave many distros a chance no matter how popular, my choice was opensuse to stick with.

I really do think opensuse is the way to go, I find yast so easy to use! Coming from windows I actually found opensuse to be tons easier to use. Even easier than Ubuntu.

I noticed on the Ubuntu live cd today that the default effects are so very similar to vista. When you close windows and such.. It feels like a very subconscious way of getting the windows users to feel more at home

I think Novell should have an opensuse "shipit". Or at least a very inexpensive way for users to have the DVD shipped to them. I have no problem downloading the iso. I just run off and leave the computer on for the day. Never in my life have I had a bad md5 checksum.

[chef_d]

same reason most people like fast food when real food is available.