What's all the hype over Ubuntu?

[Robin Laing]

Arch Willingham wrote:
> I first started dabbling with Linux about three years ago. The way I 
> ended up using Fedora was it was the first link I clicked on that worked 
> (I think it was FC3). Since that time, I have around fifteen machines 
> running it. All of them run FC8 except my laptop which, as of yesterday, 
> is running the beta of FC9.
> 
>  
> 
> With that said, I have never seen any other version of Linux running 
> except Fedora. What’s all the hype around Ubuntu? I realize I could 
> download an install a copy but I never really saw any reason to since 
> FCx seems to work great.
> 
>  
> 
> I’m not trying to start a battle of which is better…just trying to get 
> an idea of why its seems so popular.
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks!
> 
>  
> 
> Arch
> 

Many have stated the ease of install and longer term support over 
Fedora.  Even the issues with codecs/software have been mentioned.

My feeling is it is applications already made for the distribution. 
There are an awful lot of applications that I have looked at recently 
that have Ubuntu versions available but I have to compile the source 
myself to get a Fedora version.  Some applications have FC4 or other 
earlier versions that do not work on F7 or F8.

I have not tried Ubuntu but our sys admin has put Ubuntu onto machines 
that used to run Fedora because of software and upgrade issues.  And 
upgrade issues are a big one.

Reading this forum shows the problems with Fedora when you look at the 
different repositories and how they conflict with each other.  It would 
be nice to be able to get packages from freshrpms, livna or atrpms 
without worrying about borking your system.

I think the way to look at is as "Easy as Windows."  I shudder at the 
comment but that is what I hear for comments.

-- 
Robin Laing