OT: What's the deal with Ubuntu?

[Michael A. Peters]

On Mon, 2005-05-09 at 21:10 -0400, Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> There's a lot of talk around the Linux camp about Ubuntu: why? I've read
> some reviews about it and a few snippets here and there of users
> opinions on it, but I still don't get it.

Their was a similar fanfare with Knoppix - which was likely deserved,
it's a great 1 CD distro, and there was a similar fanfare over gentoo -
which is interesting but imho only suitable if you run a desktop and
have time, and there was a similar fanfare over the now defunct Rock
Linux.

In a lot of ways that is what makes OSS so great - it's not *that*
difficult for a small group with a need they think they can fill to take
an existing project and customize it to fill that need.

Some, like Knoppix, have the skill to maintain things after the initial
fanfare, some never get the initial fanfare, some get the initial
fanfare but are unable to maintain it - but ultimately, it is the users
who decide who makes it and who doesn't - and the users decide based
upon what they see of value, and that helps all of the distros out
because they all can see what is of value.

I don't personally use Debian or Gentoo, but I value from them because
sometimes when I can't get something to compile, I can steal a patch
from them. I tried Gentoo because it works from a cdrom and GNOME is my
preferred environment, but I actually prefer Knoppix for "live" distro
because it is (imho) better put together - more mature, despite using
the desktop that I'm not quite as fond of (though it has gotten a lot
better than when I initially switched from KDE to GNOME)

I prefer Fedora for installed distro's because I learned on Red Hat
(based) distro - MKLinux DR3, LinuxPPC, and YDL - and Fedora in a lot of
ways is everything I wish Red Hat had been.

But basically - due to the very nature of OSS there will be many distros
that come and go, some will get an initial following and others will
not, some will keep a following and others will not, and ultimately it
is the Linux user community that benefits - and that's a good thing.