Posted on Thursday 10th of May 2007 at 09:29 in Linux

Ubuntu Kane and Abel community struggle

A comment made against my "6 biggest wins for Linux in 2007" (read the comment by mzilikazi) has highlighted something that concerns me within the community.

Because Linux has such a wealth of options; a lot of users have their system of choice and will defend it to the end. A lot of us will continue fleeting around trying to find the one that suits us best. Unfortunately there seems to be a sense of anger/jelousy towards popular releases such as Ubuntu. I wrote quite some time ago about "some" being Kane to Ubuntu's Abel and I think this is just another case of that.

Ubuntu is in the "news" more
Ubuntu has a very strong user base and while I do admire and respect it a lot; it's not my favourite release. Yet because it was featured so heavily in the "6 biggest wins..." article one reader decided that meant I was a "fanboi".

Afraid not good sir, the reason the list was Ubuntu heavy was because it's been making the most waves. It's community is something daft like 8-million strong and Dell recently agreed to offer it - it's hard to compile a list of big/important events without making mention of things like that. Ubuntu is in the news the most because it's the biggest release out (in terms of support).

I find it odd that some members of the community push back against it so much, purely because it's popular.

Ubuntu is an excellent release and if you don't like it; don't use it. I don't use it because there are others I prefer but I can't help but respect how good it is and acknowledge it's achievements. Dell signing Ubuntu is a massive event.

Maturity dictates that things don't become bad the second they become popular. So please, be happy for Ubuntu - I personally consider it the ice-breaker for a lot of other good things to happen.

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Comments

Showing most recent 6 of 6 comments

I used to use Ubuntu. Then I stopped. Why? Because it *was* getting too easy. I installed Gentoo on one partition, and OpenBSD on another. I like it when things don’t work straightaway. I prefer to think about it, work it out, fix the problem, and come out of it all with a deeper understanding of how Linux and my computer work. If you’re not like me, thats fine. Use Ubuntu. Maybe you’re not a computerey person, or maybe you want to spend a minimal amount of time getting things running.

But I don’t think wanting things to be hard is such a "bizarre reason". All the same, I have a huge amount of respect for the Ubuntu developers. They have put craploads of effort into making Linux user-friendly.

When it comes down to it, it is each individual’s choice to make a decision about what they use, be it Linux or Windows, Slackware or Ubuntu. However, having arguments about it just wastes everyone’s time. So use what you like, and be proud of it!

Jamie

I co-admin a forum dedicated to my distro of choice and the number one of topic discussions are about Ubuntu, and 99% of those threads are started on a negative tone. It’s amazing really what some find to be wrong with Ubuntu, but what bugs most people seem to be the fact that Ubuntu is a relative easy distro both to install and getting started with. For some bizarre reason a lot of longtime Linux users want Linux to be hard. To run Linux you should put in a huge effort learning the CLI, kernel compilation etc, and don’t dare to come dragging with GUI apps that make traditional hard stuff easy. Thats the Windows way.

I really think a lot of Linux users are afraid of loosing the l33t status if Linux becomes too accessible. If anyone can get up and running with Linux in an hour we that use ’real distros’ have nothing to brag about anymore.

Then some are concerned about prorietary drivers and stuff like that, others are afraid Ubuntu will in some way eradicate the other ’real distros’.

Popularity is scary and can often feel threatening. If the eight million users were spread over several distros everyone would be happy, but when one single distro acquire such huge user base in such a short time people get suspicions.

For years we have discussed how we could make Linux more popular. Now that Ubuntu have broken some serious ground on that aspect it’s not at all good. The reason for the Ubuntu scare is complex but I really believe it will calm down and become just another choice.

Lavene

As someone who dosn’t like Ubuntu myself I thought I would share my reason:

It simply comes down to the fact that I don’t want a monopoly distro, if you have 1-3 popular distros then it becomes easy for hardware/software developers to support those and only those distros (software is only a real problem for closed source that is still important in Linux, like Oracle’s databases). If you have no distro with >5% of the market then you have to find a way to support all distros equaliy like useing the LSB.

There are other reasons, like the fact Ubuntu is IMO not actually such a good distro, and the overexposure of Ubuntu in the news, but the one above is the main one

We’re all on the same boat with Ubuntu Linux.

Roy Schestowitz

Linux distro is like a religion, once you are a (name any distro) believer :
chances are you cannot see what another person is trying to tell you.
chances are you will feel one is better than the other (vi against emac, kde against gnome) etc etc etc

Linux distro is like a dress, it may be suitable for you but may looks damn ugly on another.

Add the above together, Linux is somethihng you use and keep your big mouth shut, cause you are already blinded by your distro. Trying to analyse the situation only makes things worst.

Look at yourself as a religious fanatic and you will understand what I mean. The more people writes about this or that distro, the more divided Linux will become as we will be more rooted to our own miserable views.

Caesium

i think that ubuntu is an ice breaker so to speak in pulling people over to linux

the biggest problem stopping linux going more mainstream (and maybe whats stopping it) is the nature of the beast

the fact it is "community" based means that some people will not move over to it

just to clarify something, i am a linux user ive been using gentoo as my main distribution the last few months and i love it but i deal with alot of people who are not into computing and cannot understand how the linux community works

~CW~

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Ubuntu Kane and Abel community struggle