If you search Google, especially the news portion of the site, you will notice one thing that seems to be repeating itself over and over: Ubuntu is Linux. Of course, the false corollary of that is also repeating itself as well: Linux is Ubuntu. Are people, or, more importantly, news editors, really that stupid? Does no one ever do research anymore? Is this the fall out that we are experiencing from the failure of the American Public Education System?
Of course, when you look at this phenomenon, you will realize that this has been going on for several years in the press. Back in the mid to late 90’s, if you read any of the trade press on computers, you would have been forgiven for assuming that Linux was Red Hat. With the push into the server market, though, it seems that Red Hat has lost a little bit of its mindshare in equating their name with Linux. Then, around 2001 or 2002, Suse started to become synonymous with Linux. Novell pushed the Suse brand after buying the group out, and the desktop experience, at that time, was one of the better environments to work in, at least as Linux desktop solutions in the corporate world went back then. Of course, on the heels of Suse came the marketing of Linspire and Xandros. (I won’t even go into them, since if I wanted a Windows desktop, I would use XP.) Now we have Ubuntu.
Please do not misunderstand this. Personally, as I’ve stated before, I use Mepis 6.0, which is built upon the core packages of Ubuntu (which is built upon the core packages of Debian). However, I’m beginning to be a little irked by all the fanatical support that Ubuntu is garnering. Ubuntu did not create apt-get, that is the tool that differentiated Debian from the Red Hat systems. This powerful utility seems to be the main reason why people are singing the praise for Ubuntu. It is also the reason why people are suggesting that Ubuntu should be considered a newbie friendly distribution for those who are brand spanking new to Linux. Sometimes I can agree with that, depending on the circumstance, but most of the time I can’t.
For instance, there are a myriad of ways in which Ubuntu fails the newbie. If you are trying to get someone who has always known Windows all of her life to use Linux, then I would suggest that you install either Xandros (yes, I know I stated I don’t like the distro, but I will still give credit where it is due) or PCLinuxOS. I would still tilt towards the PCLinuxOS distro, though, as it seems to have everything set up for the home user right out of the box (or image). It has Firefox and Thunderbird set up as a default, plus all the media codecs and file sharing utilities an open source person could want. Not to mention that source packages are still there in case if you need to compile something from source, not that a newbie would want to be doing something like that when they are first starting out on Linux.
Be that as it may, this leads me to refute a piece of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) that has been floating around on the internet for quite some time- Linux is not fractured like Unix. Microserfs like to say that when you install one version of Linux, it is incompatible with all the other versions, and then they begin to use this “methodology” to show how small each distro’s market share is in comparison to Microsoft’s share, especially in the server realm. This is simply not true. There is a reason why most F/OSS advocates relate to the term “flavor” instead. Just as there are flavors of Windows (95, 98, 2000, XP, and so on), they can still essentially run the same software. The same is true for Linux. The same software that I’m running on Mepis right now is the same software that I ran on Suse 10.0. Sure, there are some “compatibility” issues in where certain libraries are kept on the file system, but the same is true in the Windows environment. Nothing that a good symlink, or a conversion utility such as Alien, can’t cure.
Now that the Portland Project and other similar initiatives are gaining traction, basically all the distros will turn into is how many and what type of software packages will be automatically installed. General purpose? Ubuntu. Corporate development and business specific? Suse. Multimedia? Well, can’t think of one right off the tip of my hat, but may I suggest Symphony? With the installation of each, you will find that the only thing that will make it stand out from the rest is how it will curtail to your specific needs right after installation. Not to mention that you are not locked into the preconfigured system, as most packages are just a click away with Synaptic and SMART.
So please! If you are advocating the adoption of Linux, actually look at what the user wants, rather than just throwing Ubuntu at them. Most of the time, especially for home use, it’s a good fit, but their are other options that may adhere to what the user wants to do a lot better!
The Cathedral Arctic 