No love for Ubuntu

L.Jenkins

Anyone else have an absolute hatred of the OS? I can't quite put my finger on why and maybe it's because of all the hype in recent years. Yes I'll use Linux Mint if absolutely necessary, but that's the closest I'll come to using Ubuntu. I'm more of a Fedora fan and I'll use Debian if needed.

PrzemoF

You can say whatever you want, but ubuntu opened linux world to the "normal" users without the need of assistance from a linux guru once in a while. BTW I use fedora/raspbian.

L.Jenkins

I won't deny what it did for Linux, but as an expert user, it just doesn't do anything for me.

Tom Dunne

Yes, most definitely.

I think it's that menu-thing at the side, I find it very annoying.

From a usability perspective, it's a big no. From a technical perspective, in fairness, it is up there with the best in terms of software and support.

Johnboy1951

I am no expert user, just someone who uses an OS.

I tried Ubuntu back when they were heavily promoting it with free CDs etc.
I did not find it an easy OS to use, never having used anything other than Windows at the time.

I installed more than 20 distro on my hardware while testing (IIRC it was 24) and Ubuntu was never a real contender for me. It was nowhere near as new user friendly as PCLinuxOS, Mandrake/Mandriva, Mepis, and a few others.

My choice came down to Mandrake or the new kid on the block, based on Mandrake, called PCLinuxOS which I adopted.

Nothing Canonical has done in the meantime encouraged me to reconsider my decision. Quite the opposite.

liamo

I don't have a hatred of Ubuntu and I would use it if I had to (in fact I do have Lubuntu on an old PC at home). Having said that, I don't really have any love of it.

My server distro of choice for years has been Debian. Fedora for desktop.

I've installed Ubuntu (both desktop and server) a number of times. I think I felt I should like it. However, any installs never lasted long and I always went back to my old reliables. Old dog, new tricks an' all that.

L.Jenkins wrote: »

Anyone else have an absolute hatred of the OS? I can't quite put my finger on why and maybe it's because of all the hype in recent years. Yes I'll use Linux Mint if absolutely necessary, but that's the closest I'll come to using Ubuntu. I'm more of a Fedora fan and I'll use Debian if needed.

Tom Dunne

liamo wrote: »

I think I felt I should like it.

Ha! That's exactly what I felt.

And throw in a bit of "I must be missing something here."

Johnboy1951

Tom Dunne wrote: »

Ha! That's exactly what I felt.

And throw in a bit of "I must be missing something here."

The power of marketing

Krusader

I'm using Ubuntu Gnome at the moment. I quite like it as a desktop OS. There seen to be a lot of open source projects that use it as a VA lately

Dero

I'm the very same. My distros of choice are Fedora for interactive, and CentOS for server, and have been for a very long time, so I've become very attuned to the Redhat way of doing things.

I used Ubuntu for just over a year and a half in a previous job, and technically it was fine. However, there is just something (almost indefinable) that I don't like about it. I felt bad for not liking it, as it seemed for a lot of people around me, Linux and Ubuntu were synonymous.

I *really* dislike Unity though, so I used GNOME 3, and I managed to make it look, feel & behave mostly like Fedora for the time I used it, so for most daily tasks and interaction I forgot that it was Ubuntu.

Maybe it's just that "minor differences" thing...

PropJoe10

I don't like regular Ubuntu but I really like and enjoy Ubuntu MATE edition. Really nice, streamlined, well refined OS. I'd recommend it to anyone.

human 19

Mate and Cinnamon were forks after Ubuntu went to gnome 3. Fair play to them, they have really taken off.
I dont know whether it is coincidence or convenience but the 2 most unique distros in the last few years (up to 2014 to be precise), imho, have been Hybryde and Makulu, which were both based on Ubuntu.
Unfortunately, Makulu have gone down the well-trodden windows-lookalike route.

As for Hybryde, as I dont speak French, I cant figure out what they are up to. I downloaded a nice iso but cnnt find an install option.

Johnboy1951

human 19 wrote: »

Mate and Cinnamon were forks after Ubuntu went to gnome 3. Fair play to them, they have really taken off.
I dont know whether it is coincidence or convenience but the 2 most unique distros in the last few years (up to 2014 to be precise), imho, have been Hybryde and Makulu, which were both based on Ubuntu.
Unfortunately, Makulu have gone down the well-trodden windows-lookalike route.

As for Hybryde, as I dont speak French, I cant figure out what they are up to. I downloaded a nice iso but cnnt find an install option.

Hybryde was a distro for demonstrating in live sessions the various DE environments available on Linux. Those environments could be changed without recourse to the DM.
I believe it is no longer developed ..... no release for years.

EDIT: This page says it had eleven to choose from ..... who am I to disagree

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/use-11-desktop-environments-at-once-with-hybryde-fusion-because-you-can/

human 19

Those are the environments that can be switched between using the distro. The dont do seperate releases.

Anyway, I had downloaded their 16.04 live release from their forum but it didnt have an install option which was the 1st time I had seen that.

So tonight I changed the keyboard layout and then installed ubiquity via synaptic. Using that opened the standard install package. That basically let me install the distro exactly as the live system on to the laptop. It didnt give the option to create new users or change the language or keyboard layout, so I had to do all that again.

Anyway, Im glad to have a verion of it for the next couple of years. Before creating a new root user, I might tweak it and upload my english version for them, using their guest/guest credentials.

gctest50

Ubuntu - an ancient African word meaning those who can't configure bsd

Skommando

I won't deny what it did for Linux, but as an expert user, it just doesn't do anything for me.

But it was never for expert users. That's what the command line is for.
I'm not an unbuntu fan, as people said it lacks something.
If people want linux and open source to be truly successful, it also has to be adopted as an OS by as many users as possible.
At the moment Ubuntu and Mint are making strides in that area, and that can only be good for Linux.
I'd still take them over windows anyday and I'm not a hater of window either.

L.Jenkins

When Sheldon Cooper spoke of Windows 7, he said it was too user friendly. I feel the same for Ubuntu. I like a little complication and personal configuration required by my OS.

Alcoheda

The first install I ever made was Ubuntu. The forums were really active at the time so help for common problems was easy to find.

I have to give it points in that regard.

I've been using archlinux with the i3 window manager for a long time now but when I read about the crack head Amazon ad integration stuff in Ubuntu12.10, I swore I'd never go back to it.

Do not want!

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks

crkball6

L.Jenkins wrote: »

When Sheldon Cooper spoke of Windows 7, he said it was too user friendly. I feel the same for Ubuntu. I like a little complication and personal configuration required by my OS.

I had to search to see who Sheldon Cooper was. Now I'm not so sure if this point is a joke or not.

For the vast majority of the user base too user friendly is a fine goal.
Something OSX does well for it's user base and avoids them making a lot of mistakes and breaking things they didn't mean to.

A lot of the reasons people dislike Ubuntu are non technical and even this thread is an example of it most don't event know why they don't like it.

There's a point between manually compiling and been a bit of a ricer with Gentoo/Arch and just having a nice experience that also allows you to do pretty much anything you want complicated or otherwise. Ubuntu fits that but no more so than Fedora or another plethora of distro's.

Outside of the enterprise and on to personal laptops/pc's I think a huge part of it is where you're in life also. If you're young and in college and have all the time in the world to mess around it doesn't matter.

If you're a busy professional and don't have the time and you just want a desktop to function every time you turn it on something like Ubuntu is perfect. But again, no more less so than Fedora.

Hate for any distro is a bit OT as with nearly one command on any of them you can turn them into anything you want. I would have thought things like a package managers etc would have been more deciding factors or release cycles. e.g. Ubuntu LTS VS Fedora's rolling

croo

crkball6 wrote: »

If you're a busy professional and don't have the time and you just want a desktop to function every time you turn it on something like Ubuntu is perfect.

@crkball6, I totally agree with your points... except perhaps.

crkball6 wrote: »

no more less so than Fedora

I've used linux since it was first released into the wild (I still have the 90+ 3.5" floppy disks some place), I think the first distro I used was slackware, but I soon shifted to Redhat.

Back then if you wanted a gui you had to write the X configuration files yourself and the same went for everything else including the basics like the network. But I didn't mind. You couldn't really experiment with the work unix box in case it all went down the tubes, so a cheap unix box at home was a great way to experiment and learn.

But, it took a lot of time to install & and configure a linux box. When Redhat went commercial they began releasing their free Fedora but Fedora had only a 1 year lifespan. So, if you wanted to keep up to date you still had to reinstall every year.

Then Ubuntu arrived, it generally required zero configuration and could easily configure itself for such exotic set-ups as "dual monitors" and wifi (wow no wires!) which was great but even better was its LTS versions which meant you didn't need to reinstall every year! This is why I started using ubuntu on desktops & laptops.

And I know people will say you could update and not reinstall but in my experience updates rarely went smooth, it was always easier to do a clean install.

So I guess my point was, yes, today, it's as easy to install ubuntu as fedora. But with ubuntu you must not install every year, with fedora you do!

PS. on servers is all a different ball game. I tend to stick with redhat/centos there.

Johnboy1951

IMO the Ubuntu success is due to 'the power of marketing' and nothing more.

There are equally good (some would say better) distros out there who did not have the millions available for marketing that Ubuntu did and so were not promoted like Ubuntu.

crkball6

croo wrote: »

And I know people will say you could update and not reinstall but in my experience updates rarely went smooth, it was always easier to do a clean install.

So I guess my point was, yes, today, it's as easy to install ubuntu as fedora. But with ubuntu you must not install every year, with fedora you do!

I think in the past it would have been true. But with DNF it's a fairly flawless processes to upgrade.

But as I had said releases cycles etc are a far better reason for choosing one distro over the other rather than because one might think Mark Shuttle worth is a bit of a knob

I'm not trying to advocate one distro over another. They're for the most part essentially the same it's why I'm bemused by the dislike of Ubuntu especially when most people can't explain why they dislike it.

L1011

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

IMO the Ubuntu success is due to 'the power of marketing' and nothing more.

There are equally good (some would say better) distros out there who did not have the millions available for marketing that Ubuntu did and so were not promoted like Ubuntu.

The DVD posting before people had decent broadband was a huge factor in hauling it above the major distros of the era. You don't see many big SuSE fans around anymore when I remember it being probably #1 at the time amongst people I know.

crkball6

OSI wrote: »

I think my main problem with Ubuntu was when it went from being a simple, straight forward and easy to install distro, to one that felt it needed to dictate your Linux experience and squeeze every penny from it. Unity left a very bad taste for me, shoving Amazon adverts into Unity was even worse along with altering Rythmbox so music purchases came from them by default. They took Linux and tried to apply an Apple ecosystem approach to it, which was the exact antithesis of what I wanted from Linux.

Yes, Thankfully this was disabled in 16.04.

A lot of people don't like unity but there's always kubuntu/xubuntu/ubuntu mate etc

croo

Yeah, Unity & its forced advertising was when I stopped using the core ubuntu. But I still use ubuntu on my laptop, only with a gnome3 interface - which a lot of people also dislike but I find it nice and simple. But that's the great thing about linux in general - everyone is free to mix & match as they prefer.

rebeve

croo wrote: »

Yeah, Unity & its forced advertising was when I stopped using the core ubuntu. But I still use ubuntu on my laptop, only with a gnome3 interface - which a lot of people also dislike but I find it nice and simple. But that's the great thing about linux in general - everyone is free to mix & match as they prefer.

Nail on head !!

smelly sock

I hate ubuntu.

Installed it on a stand alone machine without internet access. Went to play a video and was screamed at that my video player need to be updated. Needed web access to do so. Couldn't get a wireless dongle working on it of course. Couldn't download vlc for it as it needed to be downloaded for their repository. In the end had to lift the desktop down to my router plug it in an download all updates. WTF.

L.Jenkins

smelly sock wrote: »

I hate ubuntu.

Installed it on a stand alone machine without internet access. Went to play a video and was screamed at that my video player need to be updated. Needed web access to do so. Couldn't get a wireless dongle working on it of course. Couldn't download vlc for it as it needed to be downloaded for their repository. In the end had to lift the desktop down to my router plug it in an download all updates. WTF.

If you were to reinstall the OS with Internet Access, it may not be an issue, unless the drivers for your dongle isn't supported yet.

smelly sock

Thanks Jenkins.

I admire what the community try and do to be fair.

L.Jenkins

No bother. Ubuntu is a great starter OS, but with more experience, I would suggest moving on to something else in time. For example, you could try Linux Mint, a derivative of Debian or even Debian itself. You could go on to try Arch or Fedora, my personal favourite. Granted, my laptop is second hand and several years old, so I may have to do a back up and move back to something simpler like Mint.

Worztron

I hate Unity. Also Ubuntu/Canonical have done some dodgy things like the amazon search on by default, mir, etc.

I am grateful to Ubuntu for getting me into GNU/Linux but I've since switched to Debian and love it.