Ubuntu

[Peter Dobratz]

>> Ubuntu has worked at
>> making the average-user experience easier, is that it?

Short answer: I'm an Ubuntu user and overall very happy with the
experience for an average desktop user.  Read on for how I got there.

I've ran Red Hat (4.2 I think) sometime around 1997-1998 when I was
first interested in trying out this Linux thing.  On the
recommendation of a friend, I switched to Debian and used that for a
number of years until switching to Ubuntu a few years ago.

I really appreciate little niceties in Debian like man-pages for
everything (including config files).  Sometimes you have upstream
packages where the debian packager writes the man page just so that
the package conforms to the Debian standard (policy I think they call
it).  Programmers don't always like to write documentation, but when
you're stuck trying to figure something out, being and to type man
<just-about-anything> is a real help.  The second major advantage to
Debian is apt (the package manager that allows you to download
packages).  My favorite tiny text editor is jove, but it's not
included by default.  All I need to do is "apt-get install jove" and
faster than I can figure out which other text editors are installed I
can start editing config files (I switched away from RedHat before yum
came about.)  Another reason at the time to switch from Red Hat to
Debian was Debian's ability to be downloaded as a set of 5 or so
floppy disk images and then install by downloading the packages over
the network (this was before the prevalance of CD burners that worked
reliably with cheap media, enough bandwidth to download ISOs quickly,
and even PCs that booted from CD without the help of a floppy).

In Debian, you have stable, testing, and unstable (a.k.a. sid - still
in development).  The stable distribution is what people are referring
to with the long release cycles.  At various times, I've ran all three
of them.  With stable, you have really old and well-tested software.
The Debian folk seem to be sticklers for only including security
updates, so when some software comes out with a new version to address
a security issue and add some new features, the Debian maintainers
pick through the source and only grab the security update related
bits.  Often times when you are using free software, you'll find that
it doesn't do something that you want and if you start working with
the software authors, the first thing they want you to do is start
running the latest version, not the 2-3 year old version in Debian
stable.  For some time, I ended up compiling my own versions of
certain applications.  Usually the Debian package lists what packages
you need to build from source and you can just install those (packages
ending in "dev"), then you compile and install to /usr/local some
newer version of a package.  You run into problems when the software
needs a newer version of something more system-wide like gnome and
your Debian stable has too old of a version.  Pretty soon, you move to
Debian testing, which is where the packaged software goes after it's
been uploaded to unstable and shown not to majorly break stuff.  But
then with large system-wide libraries, upgrading them typically breaks
at least something, so the Debian guys hold-off on moving it from
unstable to testing, and then you end up running Debian unstable.  In
order to shield yourself from the breakage of updating the packages on
your system, you end up only doing it every few weeks or so when you
have time to sit down and sort out any breakages that might arise.
Either way, you seem to be stuck between old software and bleeding
edge software that breaks frequently.  For a server, running old
software that's been thoroughly testing is a good thing, but for the
average desktop user, you typically want to use more recent versions
of stuff.

Ubuntu seems to address these problems with Debian.  You still end up
with a lot of Debian goodness when running Ubuntu (they didn't take
the man pages away).  They still use apt and .deb files (though with
their own repository).  But to answer your original question, Ubuntu
really does focus on the average user's experience.  More often than
not, stuff just works in Ubuntu.  It also has less of a designed by
committee feel to it.  They are a little less pedantic when it comes
to licensing (Firefox is still called Firefox, not Iceweasel).  They
have gained significant mind-share (lots of people write Ubuntu-this
and Ubuntu-that howtos).  They do have some good user forums where
someone else has usually come across and solved the problem you're
looking at.  My day to day Ubuntu usage now mainly centers around
gnucash and web browsing on a Dell desktop that's a few years old, so
I'm no longer pushing it in terms of bleeding edge hardware and
software support.

Peter