Ubuntu: Linux for Human Beings
“The Ubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Manifesto: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit.”
Can someone tell me how this is truly different than Red Hat?
May 2nd, 2005 at 2:43 pm
It’s supposed to be better (?) at installs — OS and apps. But then, I’m more familiar with Kubuntu. “The Kubuntu project aims to be to KDE what Ubuntu is to Gnome: an integrated distro with all the great features of Ubuntu, but based on the KDE desktop.”
That said, I don’t know this or any distro is all that much different from others. None of them are particularly innovative design or user friendly. Their interaction with the design community (pick a flavor — IA to Usability) is actually worse than commercial ventures.
May 2nd, 2005 at 4:07 pm
In my experience: Red Hat allows me to correct any invalid assumptions that the installer makes. Ubuntu, so far, has not. (I can’t get it to display anything higher than 640×480 on the one computer I’ve tried it on, even though the video card is perfectly capable of higher resolutions.)
May 4th, 2005 at 4:50 pm
The first noticed difference is that Ubuntu is based on Debian, while RedHat has its own home-grown package system. This has technical as well as usability implications - the knowledge required to perform administration tasks is different. Red Hat was designed as a server distribution, so its centered in power users rather than being easy to use for beginners.
Ubuntu tries to follow the “just works” principle, where everything should be properly configured from installation without requiring further tweaking, and providing easy to use goal-centered administration tools. Ubuntu has already achieved some nice usability improvements for the Gnome desktop and the Synaptic package manager.
It’s in its early stages of development, so it doesn’t lives to the expectatives (yet). But given the time they’ve been working (less than a year from their first public release) and the current results, it’s one of the most promising Free-as-in-Speech distributions for end users.
May 4th, 2005 at 4:55 pm
The first noticed difference is that Ubuntu is based on Debian, while RedHat has its own home-grown package system. This has technical as well as usability implications - the knowledge required to perform administration tasks is different. Red Hat was designed as a server distribution, so its centered in power users rather than being easy to use for beginners.
Ubuntu tries to follow the “just works” principle, where everything should be properly configured from installation without requiring further tweaking, and providing easy to use goal-centered administration tools. Ubuntu has already achieved some nice usability improvements for the Gnome desktop and the Synaptic package manager.
It’s in its early stages of development, so it doesn’t lives to the expectatives (yet). But given the time they’ve been working (less than a year from their first public release) and the current results, it’s one of the most promising Free-as-in-Speech distributions for end users.