On Fri, 2005-11-04 at 20:39 +0000, Brett Parker wrote:
Hmm, I still haven't jumped on the Ubuntu bandwaggon, it's alright, but it's nothing particularly special... I'd much rather have something that I know is going to survive, long term...
I hear what you are saying but I'm not convinced it really matters with individual workstations. Sure if I was rolling out a whole office or providing a standard desktop spec then I would be looking at survivability of the distro. But for me at least it isn't really a big deal if Ubuntu ceased to exist (beyond being a damm shame because I quite like what they have done so far) A few annoying bugs aside (most of which are 64bit specific) I was swapped over from SuSE to Ubuntu within about 5 hours....I could swap to something else just as easily.
Also I think it has already reached the critical mass whereby if Ubuntu ceased to exist as a business entity then it would be taken over as a community project pretty quickly.
I'm sure someone on the list has some of the latest Ubuntu Live
+Install
CD packs (I've got some of the previous 5.04 Hoary Hedgehog packs).
IMO the install is a dream.
I wonder if now is a good time to point out that ubuntu uses the debian installer, and there are *very* few changes to d-i in ubuntu, a bit of preseeding, IIRC, and possibly some extra udebs for some nasty drivers.
It may use the debian installer but either the default package selection or the kernel config make hardware detection more reliable in my experience. Of all the distros I have used Ubuntu required the least configuration to work on my hardware...Debian was one of the ones that required the most.
A lot of Debian people seem to just not get Ubuntu. I think this demonstrates why Ubuntu was needed in the first place. It's built for a different audience. It's obvious Bret that you really know your way around a Linux box....for people that don't I think Ubuntu is a slightly more friendly option.