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Re: [News] Things That Make Ubuntu a Linux Poster Child

"BearItAll" <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message 
news:1164620143.42170.0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> 1) Its large user base. Because Ubuntu is so popular, it becomes even more
> popular. This viral marketing was the same thing that made YouTube
> successful.
>
> That point misses the fact that Ubuntu initially started with One
> installation, then there is the pushing phase trying to get noticed 
> amongst
> the other distros. Being popular because it is popular omits the build up
> period.
>
> Ubuntu isn't popular because its popular, it became popular because it
> offered users something they didn't feel that they got from other distros.
> Remaining popular can come for the reasons that the writer mentioned
> though.

    Or perhaps it started off somewhat popular, and became more popular 
because it was already popular. I think one reason I looked into Ubuntu was 
that someone mentioned it somewhere. I'm told there's something like 400 
distributions of Linux, and I've seen a long list of torrents to validate 
that claim. But I could probably only name maybe 6 of them: Ubuntu, Debian, 
Suse, Fedora, Redhat, and that source-code one with "emerge". Oh, and Yellow 
Dog (now famous, to me at least, because of its tie in with the PS3).

    These are the 7 most popular Linux distributions in my world view. And 
because they are the most popular ones, they are the ones I'm most likely to 
try out if for some reason I decide to try a new distribution. That means 
these 7 distributions have a big advantage over the other 393 distributions 
out there, in terms of getting me to switch to them.

    I think for many people, if they know more than 0 distributions, then 
they only know 1 distribution, and it's Ubuntu. That gives Ubuntu a big 
advantage over the 399 other distributions, which is one of the reasons why 
Ubuntu is becoming popular at a faster rate than the other distributions 
are.

[...]
>
> 3) Its ease of use. Lets face it, you can't make a mainstream distribution
> without ease of use. If you tell a Linux beginner that they will have to
> type out all their commands into a console, they will have a Windows CD in
> their disk drive faster then you can say "Open Source".
>
> I don't see that, when I tried Ubuntu I didn't feel like I had anything
> particularly special loaded. It was the nice clean gnome that I always
> load, except that the menus were reduced. Items that you are used to 
> seeing
> weren't there.
>
> So I suspect the ease of use comes from less room for confusion. That is
> probably a good thing for new users. Probably is a particularly good thing
> to have reduced menus on a training system. I did notice that on the 
> Ubuntu
> web site they had some particularly good tutorials of various aspects of
> Linux. So all in all the reduced menus along with a good tutorial is a 
> good
> thing.

    Yes, when I had tried Ubuntu a couple years ago, I found the community 
extremely friendly and helpful. I've had some Ubuntu problems again recently 
(within a few months), and asked again, the replies were less friendly and 
less helpful. I guess once the community reaches a certain size, you have 
more "leechers" and fewer (in terms of ratio, rather than absolute numbers) 
"seeds" of knowledgeable information, so to speak.

    But the software itself is very user-friendly, especially in comparison 
to other distributions. I've mentioned the "Don't ask me whether I want 
Gnome or KDE or something else -- just pick for me" feature of Ubuntu that I 
really liked. Here's another small detail I noticed during the install:

    When Ubuntu asked me what kind of keyboard I had, they provided a small 
text area to test my selection. Fedora Core did not. So I had to guess for 
Fedora Core (or actually, use my previous knowledge from using the Ubuntu 
installer) and hope for the best. This is the kind of small details that 
really show that the Ubuntu team have the user in mind when putting together 
their distribution.

    - Oliver 



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