Between the devil and the deep blue sea

[Froggerprogger]

Hi @ll.

About 2 months ago I installed Ubuntu to give Linux another try. (About 3 years ago I already installed RedHat, but I didn't use it)

The installation was very easy, Ubuntu simply starts up and was ready to use. Internet etc. was directly useable.

More complicated (in sense of time-consuming) were some of the following things:
- Use the latest nvidia-gfx-driver. Solution: Use 'envy' (http://www.albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html)
- Using two monitors. Solution: you have to edit the xorg.conf-file by hand
- get the Xilinx-software for FPGA-programming and the JTAG-programming-driver run (I had to compile the binaries using ./configure, make install)
- Configure Thunderbird under Windows and Ubuntu to manage a common mailbox, regardless which system you are currently running.
- mount my harddiscs by startup (Solution: edit etc/fstab)
- install PureBasic (easy when the needed packages are installed, see the forums here)

The above things took me about two full days, but in this time I learned very much about Linux, the user-rights, file-systems, mounting, linux-kernel, gcc, package-structure,...

Very helpful were these forums:
http://ubuntuforums.org (English)
and especially http://www.ubuntuusers.de/ (German), there are many simple and well-structured tutorials in the wiki. And there are several further google-hits when having any problem.

At the moment I use Ubuntu more often than Windows, and I had never any problems with it. Even at the system-upgrade to the newest version the only problem was that I had to restart 'envy' to reinstall the display-drivers.

But I would advise you to learn using the console. The console under (any) linux is a very powerful tool (things like grep, piping, awk, shellscripts,...)
And if you can use it on one linux, you can use it for all. I have a root-server running Debian in the internet and I am much more familar with it now.

Summa summarum:
Linux (here: Ubuntu) is easy to install and to use basic functionality, e.g. OpenOffice, Eclipse, Surfing, Media-Playback,... . It is more advanced to do more special things (sometimes things that windows-user didn't ever think of that they might be complicated).
You should have interest to go deeper into linux, and read, read, read in the internet, do basic tutorials, the man-pages to commands, etc. All the things you learn beside the GUI are nearly to 100% adaptable to any linux-distribution.
If you only learn how to do things by mouseclicking (like under windows), then you learn only your linux-distribution, but if you learn how to do things from the console, then you learn linux.

[Dave651]

Frankly it's about time the Linux community distilled to a single distro. A distro such as Ubuntu that has a goal and a view of the future. Ubuntu is making waves because somebody decided enough was enough with all the chaff out there and decided to create a distro that would eventually challenge MS.

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/mai ... linux.html

I don't agree with this article by Alexander Wolfe, and he doesn't do much to support his case other than to claim that Linux is a mess because of the number of distros. The last thing the Linux community needs is to have just a single distro. I have been a user of Debian for some time because it's the one that most suits what I am looking for, but it isn't for everyone and it's great that they have other distros to choose from.

To try to force everyone to use the same distro is like trying to get everyone to use the same programming language. Having variety and freedom of choice is a strength, not a weakness. In fact lack of choice was one of the reasons I dropped Windows in the first place.

Just as an aside, PCLinuxOS is currently ahead of Ubuntu on Distrowatch's popularity ratings. By default their home page shows figures for the last 6 months, but PCLinuxOS is top for the last 3 months.

[codemaniac]

[..]To try to force everyone to use the same distro is like trying to get everyone to use the same programming language. Having variety and freedom of choice is a strength, not a weakness. In fact lack of choice was one of the reasons I dropped Windows in the first place.[..]

In all other points you seem to be right, but I think this is an better example: Trying to force everyone to use a particular distro is like forcing everyone to believe in the same religion. People have the freedom to believe or not to believe in religions and there shouldn't be a rule that you should use a particular distro either.