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Ubuntu versus...

Comparisons of the new Ubuntu Linux operating system to others.

(These comparisons are based on my limited experience. You may disagree. You can mail me if you like.)

Ubuntu vs Debian

+ Almost all Debian packages are available.

+ No idiotic debian-devel flamewars.

+ Six-month predictable upgrade cycles are far nicer than 2-year-old or bleeding-edge. I can get security and bug fixes through apt without worrying that it will break libc.

+ No dselect! dselect put me off Debian for about three years in the 90s.

+ Sane and simple installer. (I haven't tried the new Debian installer for a while, and I hear it's got better. Of course, most existing Debian users are so cowed that they install by cloning an existing system...)

+ No hand-hacking X configurations, at least on my machine.

− Can't upgrade in-place from Debian; presumably you need to move Debian's system files out of the way and install Ubuntu. Not terribly hard.

Ubuntu vs Gentoo

+ Both seem to be reasonably fresh. Both care about a default install that's reasonably pretty.

+ No pointless rebuilding of software that could be packaged as binaries.

+ Having seen the Gentoo install instructions, I think I'd rather circumcise myself — anonymous.

− Gentoo's ebuild system for defining new builds is far cleaner than that of dpkg.

Ubuntu vs Fedora

They're alike in many ways: Both are open source and free to download, have friendly installers and GNOME-based desktops. Both appeal to both traditional Linux power users and non-shell-oriented users. Both have a single commercial commercial sponsor: Canonical and Red Hat.

Both, in different senses, continue on from previous work: Debian and legacy Red hat respectively.

? I haven't used Fedora enough to really compare.

+ Last time I looked, Fedora was criticized for being insufficiently open to people outside Red Hat.

+ Red Hat use Fedora as an input to their for-money distributions, whereas Ubuntu is apparently an end to itself. Whether that affects the result I don't know.

+ Ubuntu installed automatically on my Evo N410c laptop and Fedora hung. (Fedora may have since fixed this.)

Ubuntu vs Red Hat Enterprise

Red Hat Enterprise is really a services package these days, not (just) a Linux distribution, so the comparison is inexact.

+ I'd rather buy a new camera if I had this much money. Even at work, where I theoretically am entitled to use RHAS for ia64, it's a big pain to deal with their quasi-licensing restrictions. In fact, it's far easier to get a new install of Windows from MSDN and keep it up to date. Something's wrong there.

− No commercial support for Ubuntu (yet); no indication of whether or how this will happen.

− No hardware certifications (yet). Expensive 64-CPU servers are going to be running mostly SLES or RHEL for the near future.

Ubuntu vs Mac OS X

(High bar, but very much in GNOME's sights.)

− Macintosh hardware integration is far better: they only have to support a few configurations, they have all the specs, the hardware is designed to work with the OS and it's attractive in its own right. Plug a TV into the composite port and it just works. Sleep/hibernate just works.

− The Mac GUI is really beautifully polished, both visually and ergonomically. GNOME is getting better but isn't there yet: fonts on X11 used to be awful and are now OK.

+ On the other hand, you don't need to buy new hardware, PC hardware is cheaper per cycle, and you can reboot into Windows to play games.

+ Linux is now the standard Unix. Ubuntu is more consistent with what's likely to be running on your servers. Linux is faster on some benchmarks, but all benchmarks are bogus, and particularly so for desktops.

+ Linux utilities tend to be free, not annoying $10 shareware. (OK, I know about Fink, but still.)

+ Better (though slightly less consistent) keyboard navigation.

+ Less Macintosh historical baggage. OS X suffers some friction between the Mac and Unix parts, in for example handling case sensitivity or resource forks. (Mac apps can be in the wierd state of running but having no windows open, which seems to me of very marginal benefit. It's debatable.)

− No single-source 1-800 support.

− No pretty PDF alpha-blended display (yet), but I'll live. Less consistency in the GUI (though it's coming). Not every program runs under GNOME, so there's likely to be some inconsistent GUI toolkits popping up for some time.

− Some functions just have no GUI configuration tools at all: configuring wireless or a VPN may require sudo vi .

+ If something annoys you, you can patch it yourself.

+ The defaults are good, but more of them can be changed; if you don't want Nautilus or Metacity you can just install something else. That's harder/more scary on Mac OS.

+ Both GNOME and OS X are more attractive than Windows. GNOME is probably a slightly easier transition for Windows users, though neither would be very hard.

[See also: Michael Salivar's walkthrough of Ubuntu.]

posted Wed 13 Oct 2004 in /software/ubuntu | link

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