ubuntu isn't /that/ special [was: Re: fedora 7]

[kristian.hermansen-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org (Kristian Hermansen)]

On 6/4/07, Matthew Gillen <me-5yx05kfkO/aqeI1yJSURBw at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Does that somehow make what he said any less true?

Jarod's statement "s/Ubuntu Feisty/Any Modern Distro/" is the issue,
not his facts about Fedora...

> So people aren't allowed to state facts if they haven't tried Ubuntu first?
>  All he was saying is that Fedora has Desktop Effects, and likely just about
> any other modern distro does too.  Why would I have to try Ubuntu to know that?

You don't.  I never said you needed to.  But someone was looking for a
slick interface easily and Feisty offers that support with one mouse
click via "Enable Desktop Effects".  That is a fact and why I
suggested it.  If Fedora/SuSE does the same just that easily, then I
would also recommend them.  Do either FC7 or latest SuSE offer a
one-click "Desktop Effects" option?  Please let me know if I have
missed that.

Features like compiz/beryl belong to "Any Modern Distro" because it is
all the same source.  We all know this.  The question then becomes
ease of use and the interface for the consumer...

Older people seem to have a disliking for Ubuntu just because it is
the new (and most popular) kid on the block.  I have been running
Linux for a very long time also, so I am not just a guy who picked up
Ubuntu last week and found Jesus.  I have run just about anything out
there for some amount of time, going back to Red Hat 5, which is the
first distro I actually used significantly.  Some of you may have been
running Slackware or Debian before my time, but I'm not that far off.
I started with Linux in 1996 or so on an old beat up 386 desktop.  Or
was it a machine with a separate math-coprocessor?  I forget.  Might
even have been a Cyrix!

In any event, I have run Red Hat, Fedora, Debian, Gentoo, Lycoris,
Mandrake, SuSE, Slackware, etc etc for at least enough time to learn
each distro's nuances.  In the end, it is all just Linux.   I found
Ubuntu the month it came out (October 2004), and switched to it from
Gentoo.  I had surgery on my leg to remove some melanoma (cancerous
mole), and I had some time to kill.  In about three months, I realized
that Ubuntu was the distro with the best laptop hardware support hands
down.  Soon after, I switched to amd64 from i386 versions.

The reason I suggest Ubuntu to so many is that I found more people
come back and say to me that Fedora did not work properly for them on
their laptop, but that Ubuntu did.  Many times it came down to X not
properly being configured, by default, for their widescreen laptop.
And that's what newbies want.  Something that works out of the box.
If they weren't newbies, they would be hacking the configs themselves
and my opinion, by that time, is irrelevant.  So, yes, I generally
suggest Ubuntu over Fedora and others because in my time I have found
it to, generally, met the expectations of the people I have suggested
it to when maybe Fedora or SuSE failed them.  Maybe things have
changed dramatically with FC7.  However, my point is that no one
should take any one's opinion, even Jarod's or mine, as gospel.
Everyone should try everything, if they have the time.  That's how you
form a good solid basis for opinion.  In college, I had a lot of time
to play with things.  And now you have my opinions, however much you
feel that they are incorrect.  They are just opinions and my
suggestions should be valued as such.  Go forth and learn more and
more because GNU/Linux gives you that freedom...
-- 
Kristian Hermansen

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