New Ubuntu on the way!

[tedanderson]

Why is one distribution becoming, in itself, Linux to the majority of this new community?

It's pretty much the same way that Windows became the "only" OS for the new PC community in the late 90's. Up until that point, anyone with a PC had a basic working knowledge of DOS. When Windows was in its infancy, there were still several DOS apps available (most of which were pretty good!) but once the majority of the community shifted over to windows, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who knows how to make a batch file or how to navigate around the hard drive using the command prompt.

[shayward]

Tony, I've been keeping a close eye on Mono for a few years now. It is an impressive project (or set of projects) to say the least. If I do take the plunge, a Virtual Machine does make a lot of sense. I was thinking of using that Ubuntu installer over a test XP machine as opposed to my production machine.

Why is one distribution becoming, in itself, Linux to the majority of this new community?

Because, from what I understand, it's actually easy to install and use. I looked at Linux when I was in college (over 10 years ago)... some of the super networking geeks were into it (I'm lousy at networking... decent at programming) and they spent weeks trying to get everything to work right and some things just wouldn't.

I know that it has gotten a lot better since then but I think Ubuntu was probably the first distro to cross that point where a lot of moderately-technically-proficient people (or the people who jus can't be bothered with a big hassel) would start using it.

It's kind of like what Visual Basic Classic (pre-.NET) did for Windows programming. VB made Windows programming not only much simpler (it's a brute in C for Windows or Visual C++) but it crossed the line where it made Windows programming (and arguably programming itself) accessible to the masses.

1000s of programs cropped up in the 90s written in VB Classic and I would argue that this fact gave a sizable contribution to Windows' success over its competitors.

Of course, VB Classic's ease of use and strange way of doing things lead to a whole generation of less-than-ideal programming practices... something that still haunts the VB.NET programming community even though VB.NET is every bit the modern, well-constructed Object Oriented platform that C# is.

(Not intended to put down VB... every language has it's pros and cons, I started as a VB Classic programmer, and VB opened the word of programming to the masses (a good thing in my view), and VB.NET is great... even if I did jump ship for C#).

Linux done Ubuntu style stands to give Microsoft some good competition and even if it did lead to some lag in Linux development overall it's going to be a good thing.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,14...l?tk=nl_dnxnws

[cjlowe]

Hmmmmmm.

Linux is a great collection of tools, and Ubuntu is a very easy-to-use implementation of some of those tools. This is probably why it gets such vast following.

Last I checked, every package I use is still supported and getting regular updates. And by "last I checked", I mean "last time I updated them", which was last week. And I use a fair bit of stuff.

I really don't think Ubuntu's killing Linux development. I think Ubuntu's bringing new players to the field who are bringing their creative skills. If that creativity is what makes Linux desktops useable for people who can't afford Linux, bring it. Linux desktops still don't pass the grandma test ("can I give this to my grandma and know that she'll be okay with it if I go away for 6 months?").

[Creonus]

Originally Posted by cjlowe

Linux desktops still don't pass the grandma test ("can I give this to my grandma and know that she'll be okay with it if I go away for 6 months?").

On the hand, I've found that it's passed the "sister test". The first time she returned from a summer abroad, her notebook was completely killed with viri and trojans. -- this despite my best preventive / counter measures.

The second year, she went abroad with Ubuntu (dual boot Windows just in case). It was a whole lot better.

[cjlowe]

The test for me has to satisfy these three:
- They can install it with zero help. (Ubuntu is decent in this respect, but not only are the chances of it failing to install higher, the obscurity of the errors are huge)
- If anything needs to be changed, they can change it without hacking away at a CLI. (Again, Ubuntu doesn't quite have this yet...)
- If it breaks, there's plenty of people who can help them. (Bzzzt )

[Creonus]

WOW! You expect your grandma to install the OS herself! That's a pretty high standard.


WOOT! Post number 499th. When's the next one?

[cjlowe]

Well, my grandparents are pretty smart...

But seriously, they have managed to reinstall Windows before.


C'mon, reply, you know you wanna!