Ubuntu

See, because I'm the anti-social gamer that I am, when I see the name Ubuntu, I immediately go to a rare spawn enemy in World of Warcraft named Ubuntu. >_>

 

Although I agree, it would be nice to hear what made you post this thread now, what your own opinion is, why you like Ubuntu, where you think it sucks and so on The opening post usually directs the discussion and serves as an abstract for people who join in later.

For example, I like it because it's free, simple and gives me everything I need when it comes to testing Unix server stuff. Also, because it's free, I can have a bunch of VMs with it, each for a specific purpose (like, one has Java stuff, the other Python, the third is a LAMP server and so on). It's all nice and compartmentalized, backup is simply making a copy of the folder and still, when I log on to one of these, it's a full-size desktop with good support. However, my host system is still Windows.

 

I like Ubuntu because everything is there, right out of the box. I recommend it to someone new to computers because they're pretty much break proof as long as you don't screw around in Terminal.

*Insert Diva Voice*"Girl please.... sudo apt that if you want to."
But seriously, Office Suite, web browser, media player, email client, right off the bat. Great little OS for advanced and basic users.

 

Ubuntu is not awesome. I will discuss

First off, who I am. I'm a FLOSS advocate, but not a bigot (heck, I'm writing this on a Windows machine!). To the FLOSS advocate part of me, Ubuntu flies firmly in the face of everything that I believe in. For a long time, they've acknowledged that certain aspects of planning have occurred in secret, and now they're acknowledging that aspects of development occur in secret. I view this as going down a slippery slope from which it may be difficult to recover.

Now, the reasons that most end-users think that Ubuntu is awesome are the exact same reasons that I despise it. On the first boot of a system that has hardware that there are proprietary drivers to support it offers to install them. While this makes for a decent user experience, there may be open source drivers that will support that hardware for what you're planning on using it for.

Even if it doesn't, the value in bug reports for the open source stuff, and of getting eyeballs on it for testing, is extraordinary. How can we rid the world of this proprietary junk if no one uses the alternatives and contributes to improving on them?

Keep in mind that this is just my perspective. Personally, I'm a proud Fedora user and contributor, and a free software pragmatist.

 

Besides the reasons that RainbowMan stated, Ubuntu is built ontop of Debian, and I am not a Debian fan.

I like the goals of the Debian project. My dislike comes from dealing with some Debian bigots back in the day. That and apt-get annoys me.

I too am a Red Hat/Fedora user. I used to be a Slackware user, but about 10 years ago I had some app which was not supported on Slackware. I think it was VMware workstation and got tired of screwing with it after each update to keep it working. So I switched to Red Hat.

 

There was even a joke a few years ago that "Ubuntu" is an African word meaning "I can't configure Debian."

---------- Post added 17th Mar 2013 at 12:25 AM ----------

I personally have never been the #1 fan of Ubuntu. Although I have a poor record for loyalty to anything. I use software exactly as long as it works for me, and when it ceases working, I move on.

I like the fact that Ubuntu has done a lot towards making Linux acceptable among normal people.

But it's been less trouble free than promised by the most rabid Ubuntu supporters. At least in my experience.

One thing that also irritated me were some of the Ubuntu supporters are so in love with Ubuntu that they can't see any other possibility. I have heard supporters push Ubuntu for applications/systems where it would be a hopelessly lousy choice.

 

Slackware has always interested me, except frankly it's more of learning curve and trouble than I feel like dealing with at this time.

Years back, I used VectorLinux (based on Slackware). I liked the speed, but I do seem to recall that some software I wanted just wasn't available.

 

I am FLOSS supporter too and if there is an open-source implementation of something that works just as well if not better than the proprietary implementation, I would rather use it. However I am not like the extremists from Debian who force it down peoples throats.

I have used Ubuntu in the past and let me tell you I would rather go back to Windows if Ubuntu was the only remaining Linux distro out there. It seems that every single release has really annoying bugs that have somehow made it into the production release, the heavy use of meta packages is really annoying and the installer is real rubbish too. Besides as already mentioned Ubuntu is based on Debian, I really really despise Debian and its developers. Also if you think that apt-get is a really awesome package manager, you haven't tried portage yet. Apt-get compared to portage seems like a toy.

I currently use Gentoo now, I couldn't be happier and I don't think I will ever jump ship again. I often think to myself "Why the #@$% didn't I switch ages ago?", maybe Arch Linux and its systemd fiasco was a good thing.

 

Define the systemd "fiasco" - Fedora switched to systemd as well (and was one of the first to do so, in keeping with one of our four foundations, "First") and it has been, AFAICT, going fairly well. Is it a major change? Yep. Does it actually do what it purports to do? Yep.

I used to be (a few years ago) a systemd basher. However, I've come to like it for it's simplicity and the fact that it "just works". Most of systemd is managed via filesystem symlinks, which just Make Sense(TM) to an experienced Linux admin.

I also hated the journal, and was like "where is my /var/log/messages going?!?!?" until I realized that it wasn't going anywhere, unless I wanted it to. Even if the distro chooses to get rid of the syslog daemon by default, it's just a quick install away, and systemd has the capability to feed the journal there.

Not only that, stuff just makes sense. For example, when you do a 'systemctl status foo.service' you'll get the status of the service, the processes associated (even if they aren't named foo via the magic of starting everything in it's own cgroup), and the last couple journal entries from the service, which includes capturing stdout and stderr by default.

So yeah, I'm a bit of a systemd fan It's new, and that's what scared me away at first. But it really is a brilliant piece of engineering.

 

Well I am not saying it doesn't work or its bad and if you like it or its works for you, then good for you. However I really didn't like the way the Arch Linux developers managed the transition and the fact that they also depreciated consolekit which means people using Xfce4 or MATE got screwed over. Besides I don't like change for the sake of change and the systemd developers are full of shit.

 

I have used and greatly enjoyed Ubuntu. At the moment, I'm using Parabola GNU/Linux, as it's fully free software, and I am not gaming on this laptop, so I don't require anything proprietary.

Ubuntu is not completely free, and that's not really the philosophy. Their philosophy, which I respect, but not in the same way as I respect fully free software, is usability.

I actually installed a Ubuntu GNU/Linux system for my dad. It's a system I can actually recommend to my parents and grandparents.

I hear there is such a thing as Lesbian Linux, but I think that's mostly a joke.

Lesbians are not a joke. Serious business.

To chime in on systemd as a relatively inexperienced GNU/Linux user, I would say it's not bad. I find it nice that I'm not editing as many *.conf files. systemctl enable whatiwant.service is a preetty cool command.

 

I use Backtrack 5 R3 most of the time (live cd boot, for obvious reasons), for DNS spoofing/Phishing/Ophcrack. I've dabbled with all sorts of distros, and am considering either dualbooting my Win7 desktop with either Ubuntu, Fedora, Jolicloud, or maybe even Redhat because of server capabilities. Anyone have any views on which would be superior for basic desktop stuff and fun with DNS?

 

I've been using Ubuntu for quite some time (since 7.10), and I really like how it's transforming into a super fast and usable OS that will (hopefully) be ready for the average user very soon.

As for the privacy concerns, I'm not really worried. You can only share so much to the public.

Has anybody heard of elementary OS (www.elementaryos.org )? I've considered switching to it once it's been polished a little bit more.

 

I flip back and forth between Ubuntu and Windows (due to class crap) and like it okay, but yeah... The Debian crap gets to me too. One of these days I'm going to jump to something else, but I'll probably keep foolin around with it.

 

Ubuntu have become amazon shills, use Linux Mint or elementary OS if you want an OS that isn't basically spyware.

elementary is polished enough to use as a primary OS now.

 

I agree, however, having tried the beta, there are still a few issues that need to be worked out - one being that flash doesn't work in Midori on 64-bit machines. I'll replace Ubuntu with it once they release the final release (who knows when that'll even be LOL.)

 

Hadn't heard of it, but looking around the website, it looks like a clean and polished OS. Time to whip out my old 250GB Hitachi Hard Drive and install.