Linux

Hi everyone,

I'm an Arch user currently switching to gentoo. I'm not here to promote thoses systems since they are really dificult for new linux user but why so much people stick with Ubuntu ?

Doesn't even seem like eve is working corectly on it !

Anyway, i was wondering what kind of system you people are using (don't be afraid to get into configuration talk like witch wine version etc...)

Best regard

gentoo (since version 1.4) ... tried Ubuntu several times, can't stand it on my disk longer than 3 weeks ...

Ubuntu has worked fine for Eve for years. The only times I've had issues so has the entire Eve wine player base. I like Ubuntu as

A) I can find virtually any software precompiled for my system. I get paid to compile and port things at work I don't need/want to do for my gaming system. (That's what my nook, and cell phone are for.)

B) Ubuntu has a couple of nice GUIs which are all installable with a simple one line apt-get command. Personally I'm warming to Unity on my home desktop, and KDE at work. The key with Unity is it's designed to run one app in the foreground at a time, and easily switch which app is in the foreground. If you like to have multiple apps on the screen at once then Unity isn't the right window manager for you.

C) If I want the latest wine or what ever there is a PPA for that.

D) It's package selection tends towards a good balance of latest stuff.

F) I don't need to recompile ls to take advantage of my cpu features.

Ubuntu is great!! I've got a quad core i5 ivy bridge with GTX 570 on my gaming rig which also runs all the steam games I got as well as a dell inspiron laptop with radion HD 4650 both running ubuntu 10.04 64 bit.

I usually multi box 5 clients at one go on the gaming rig and keep track of my trade alts on the laptop while at work and appart from the general frequent omg! ccp broke something which as mentioned before effects the whole linux (and sometimes apple) community I'm usually running ok.

Any problems I do have is generally down to not updating a driver or some configuration that I've made which broke other things. I wouldn't blame it on ubuntu or any other destro.

I use Ubuntu 10.04 at work (I also have 4 Ubuntu 10.04 servers for our clients so its nice to know when there are updates etc).

The main reason I like it is the Ubuntu repositories and predictable LTS. The packages are new but not 'too new' yet not 'too old' (like Debian). Pros and cons to both I know but Ubuntu hasn't let me down over the years I've been using it.

Saying that at home I have a lot of distros.

Its all about the package manager. Aptitude has a great deal to do with debian's, and therefor ubuntu's, success.

Spend all day click and clacking at a unix terminal and your not so hot about recompiling your kernel or glibc just to get the updated video drivers workin. That said if you need some practice, spending hours confing a gaming laptop will really help. If you hate gentoo try slackware.

Ubuntu 12.04. I love Ubuntu, I did the distro jumping thing to see what was around & what was different. I always end up back with good old Ubuntu or Xubutu.
Also OP, I detected a bit of distro snobbery, please say it isn't so. One word for you, 'cancer'.

Linux mint (cinnamon)

I like Ubuntu, I don't know why. Personally I don't care why and neither should anyone else. What should be happening is all the distro dev's throwing cation to the wind, getting together, building one single unified version of a bad-ass Linux based OS, and kick OSX and Microsoft in the nutz..

To me I couldn't give a damn what distro went on to be the most widely used, because every single one of them is better than Microsoft. Now if we could just convince Adobe, and some game developers to support Linux, or just one single distro, that would be a huge step in the right direction.

Another Gentoo- and Arch user here, sharing his point of view. For a disclaimer: I am a moderately experienced GNU/Linux user and I am quite able to make a system do what I want, no matter if it's gentoo or if it's Ubuntu. I don't despise Ubuntu by any means, but I'll explain why its not the system for me.

Not that I hate Aptitude, but really, it surely is not the latest and greatest thing evar. Yes, it probably is the cause of Debians and thus Ubuntus success, but it played that role many years ago. Today there are many package managers out there just as good. The only thing, that might set apt apart from Arch's pacman (or yaourt) for some (especially new or unexperienced) users is the gui that comes with it by default, and you can have a gui for Arch's package managers too, if you want one.



Quite right, now I just didn't catch if you consider to be Ubuntu a distro that does that. To me usually "not shutting the **** up" is what Ubuntu is all about. Ubuntu specific features like the recommended driver thing or the update manager tend to not shut the **** up and be quite unnecessary. If I use Ubuntu I usually try to get rid of them as quickly as I can, wheras with Gentoo I have exactly the packages I need, do a "# emerge -avuND world && emerge --depclean && revdep-rebuild" or a "# pacman -Syu" every few weeks or so and it usually simply does what I want - no more, no less.

Now, admittedly setting up Gentoo or Arch for the first time takes some effort and a little experience, and in the case of Gentoo also time, but once thats done you can basically forget about what is running there in the background and why and your system will serve you well for virtually forever. That is mainly thanks to both of them being rolling release distributions. I don't have to worry about distribution upgrades or support ending. I will get the latest and greatest wine or kde or whatever if I want it, without having to upgrade to Arch 2013 "Oily Oister" or Gentoo 27.5 first.

So it basically comes down to what you want and need. While for Arch or Gentoo you have to make a lot of decisions, configure stuff and think about what you want your system to be like on your own, Ubuntu makes those decisions itself, gives you a lot of toys to play with and does a lot of the configuration and setting up for you. If you are fine with what Ubuntu does for you - go ahead, it might be just the system for you. But if you want to change the way your system does things, ubuntu can be quite iffy, difficult to handle and even a bit windows-ish, and you might want to have a look at more basic and straightforward distributions.