By Andrew Min
Ubuntu is, according to DistroWatch, the #1 Linux distribution. That’s a huge feat in itself. However, once you realize that Ubuntu is only three and a half years old, the feat is much bigger. How did the Linux rookie beat out the nine-year-old Mandrake, the fourteen-year-old SUSE, or the fifteen-year-old Debian?
Reason 1: Ease of use
This is the number one reason that any product takes off. If you’ve got a product meant for the masses, it needs to be easy to use. When Ubuntu came out, Debian was still using a text-based installer. Ubuntu adopted the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) philosophy and made sure that their project stayed along those guidelines. You don’t have to know bash from zsh to use Ubuntu, unlike many of the other Linux distributions. Most of the programs have labels that explain what they do (Disk Analyzer, Word Processor, etc). That’s why Ubuntu has the reputation of having everything just work great. That’s the reputation that catapulted OS X into second place in the operating system wars, and that’s the reputation that will bring Linux back into play.
Reason 2: Perfect balance between ease and power
Most Linux distributions fall into one of two camps. About half oversimplify everything, attempting to satisfy the masses. The result is a half-baked underpowered operating system that is useless for everything except email. The other half concentrates on putting power in the hands of the user. Unfortunately, the learning curve is often too steep and this results in users getting scared away (terminal? Did you say terminal? Windows, save me!!!). Ubuntu solves this problem by putting a foot in each camp.
For example, the software installer has multiple components. One part is an Add/Remove portion for the average Joe. It has titles, descriptions, and is wrapped in an easy-to-use GUI. However, more advanced users don’t need to worry that it’s too basic. They have the more advanced package manager, Synaptic, with repository editing, all the programs in the Ubuntu universe, and advanced filtering options. And if you’re really feeling geeky, there’s the powerful apt and aptitude package managers that are used from the command line.
Another good example is amount of text editors that Ubuntu ships with. For users who have never seen the terminal before, there’s Gedit, a friendly editing tool that goes by the alias “Text Editor” in the Ubuntu menu. For basic (and for many things, advanced) users, Gedit is a wonderful tool. Then, for those who prefer doing their text editing in the command-line but don’t want to learn a lot of new commands, there’s nano. This text editor, a clone of Pico, is an intuitive text editor that works much like Gedit works. Of course, it’s also terminal-based and therefore doesn’t require an X server or the GTK libraries. Finally, for those uber-geeks out there, there’s the old standbys, Vim and Emacs. These are two very complicated and extremely powerful terminal editors, and if these can’t satisfy you, nothing can.
Reason 3: Community
One of the biggest Linux forums around is the LinuxQuestions.org Forum. This forum is eight years old and attracts users of all distributions, and therefore has a huge user base. There are over 350,000 members, 600,000 threads, and 3,000,000 posts in those threads. However, that’s tiny compared to Ubuntu’s community forum. The Ubuntu Forums, only three years old, has over 600,000 members (70,000 of which are active), contains 800,000 threads, and holds over 5,000,000 posts, ranging from obscure howtos like “HOWTO: Wii remote in Ubuntu 8.04” to answers to basic questions like “What is Sudo?”
The forum isn’t the only way the community helps each other. There are hundreds of articles at the Ubuntu Wiki and the Ubuntu User Documentation, two handy wikis to help you to do almost anything you can imagine with Ubuntu. There are hundreds of users on the ubuntu-users mailing list. Hundreds more wait to answer you in realtime at the Ubuntu IRC channel on irc.freenode.net. And of course, there is the immensly popular LoCo project, which aims to put different local support groups in multiple localities around the globe (check the team list for a group near you).
Reason 4: Roadmap
Every six months, a new Ubuntu edition is released. Each edition is supported for eighteen months. Every two years, an LTS (Long Term Support) is released, with thirty six months support. Businesses know this. They know exactly how long their product will be supported for. Most other operating systems, both free and non-free, are released whenever the developer feels like it is ready. But sometimes, one operating system (think Vista) is a dud. Businesses have to wait for several years while their computers are completely unsupported for the engineers to upgrade. Not so with Ubuntu.
Another great feature of the roadmap is that the community also knows exactly when Ubuntu gets released. I personally get bored after being told multiple times that a new version is coming out, only to find out that it’s postponed again (Trillian is a good example of this). Heck, I just get sick of waiting even if I do know that it will take a while. Ubuntu does a great job of staying fresh by simply releasing new versions every six month. It doesn’t even have to have a lot of changes. It just needs a new name and a new wallpaper and Ubuntu automatically is freshened up.
Reason 5: Canonical
Canonical, the parent company, is one of the biggest forces behind Ubuntu. First of all, it offers resources. It offers legal protection, a marketing team, and a hierarchy to make sure everyone is in their place. Third party businesses are also much happier working with a reputable business (even if it is registered in the Isle of Man tax haven) than with three geeks in a garage. I seriously doubt that Dell would be pre-installing Ubuntu on their machines if Canonical wasn’t around (the only other distro they were considering was SUSE, which has Novell behind them, and Fedora, which has Red Hat behind them).
Canonical is also able to offer professional, 24/7 support. Sure, the Ubuntu Forums support is great. But your average businessman won’t feel comfortable with receiving community advice. A CEO will feel much more comfortable receiving support from Canonical or one of its many support providers. And if a business feels comfortable getting support for Ubuntu, they’ll be much more likely to stay with it rather than moving to the next operating system.
21 comments ↓
If Ubuntu is so great, why can’t I get it to install and run properly on my computer? At least Windows XP installs and runs. Windows identifies and configures itself for my hardware. Ubuntu can’t even configure itself to operate my nVidia 6800GS graphics card (which is now old technology). Ubuntu doesn’t seem to recognize my Netgear wireless router. So, using Ubuntu I’m stuck using 640×480 graphics mode and unable to connect to the internet to do anything about it. Don’t have any of those problems with Windows. Guess Ubuntu will always be the #2 operating system used only by geeks and alike. Mainstream users will never know what all the hype is about.
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Patented codecs like MP3? Closed source and binary blob drivers?
At least tell the truth with the f’ing cheerleading. If Ubuntu couldn’t play MP3s and movies, etc - it would be trailing Fedora and SUSe at this point.
Ubuntu has a few problems though, too.
Ubuntu blurs the line between free software (open source to some people) and proprietary software. Case in point, the inclusion of things like Opera and Flash in the repositories. Such things don’t belong in a free software operating system — Fedora gets this right.
There have been some improvements in this area, with Gobuntu, and now its inclusion in Ubuntu main.
So, mixed feelings for me. It’s good that people are able to use an easy to use distribution of GNU/Linux, but at the same time I feel they can be easily seduced by proprietary software, and Ubuntu does little to help them currently.
Bulletproof security
Far, far less popups in my browser than on Windows.
No popups at all when the browser is closed.
Less reboots necessary.
Can kill programs 100% of the time without crashing the entire operating system, unlike Windows.
No DRM.
No 1984 Big Brother spying on my system by the OS manufacturer.
Not made by a company who’s two founders lied under oath before a grand jury and got away with it only because they were billionaires and big contributors to our USA economy.
Agreed
I don’t think the reasons you enumerated are valid - not to count as a reason for being “the number one distro”. Every other big distro backed by a company has them - even the non-oss repositories appear in other distros.
The one and only reason for ubuntu popularity is: great marketing. That’s what always lacked. Stability, usability and power-wise, ubuntu generally loses.
Unfortunately I must disagree with you on some points. I don’t mean to offend you in any way, I just want you to know my point of view on the topic of “better” Linux distributions.
I’d like to point out that it was beaten by all the other distributions because it was advertised more than the other distributions. Canonical is partly to blame for that, and this is probably why it has so many users.
1. I think you misused the term K.I.S.S. To be honest, I cringe when I hear K.I.S.S and Ubuntu in the same sentence. I suppose this may be an elitist thing to say, but no Linux distribution that provides a full blown desktop environment such as KDE or GNOME can get away with using the term K.I.S.S. I suppose the only reason one could apply K.I.S.S to Ubuntu would be in that it takes no time to set up, at the cost of leaving you an underpowered system. Which brings me to my next point:
2. I feel that Ubuntu does NOT provide a perfect balance of ease and power. There are several other distributions that can provide a faster and more responsive system at the cost of very little ease of use, but that can be easily remedied by installing a few packages. An example of this could be Arch Linux. I switched from Ubuntu to Arch Linux on my laptop, and I’m happy to say that Arch Linux breathed new life into my laptop, and it’s just as easy to use as Ubuntu is. Wireless works, so does Wine, as well as all the proper drivers for my laptop’s hardware.
3. On the subject of community, I can agree with you that Ubuntu has one of the larger communities in the Linux world.
4. The Roadmap is actually something about Ubuntu that I don’t like. I think that it’s simpler on the users to use a distribution that features a rolling release schedule, much like Gentoo Linux. I find that it may be easier to use rolling releases than to have all your users crowd your server (And the mirrors) for the latest and the greatest.
In conclusion, I find that saying that one distribution is better than the other is a fallacy, since all the distributions are built on Linux, and it should be the choice of users to pick their favorite distribution. Something that Linux introduced me to is respecting others’ opinions on their favorite distributions, and I’ve learned to do that by accepting that essentially they are still using what I’m using. I simply find that it’s wrong to declare that one distribution is superior to all the others. The reason Ubuntu is the number 1 rated distro on DistroWatch is because it was voted the favorite by its users. There are other distributions out there, and many people think the same way about their distro as Ubuntu users feel about theirs.
Ubuntu has only better marketing, nothin else. There are many better distros out there. Like openSUSE 11.0
Impact is right: K.I.S.S. and Ubuntu are completely unrelated.
K.I.S.S. doesn’t mean ease of use; it means no complex configuration systems, and ease of administration by hand.
Things like SUSE’s YaST or Mandriva’s Control Center are the real antithesis of K.I.S.S.
The real “K.I.S.S.” principle is applied in distros like Slackware and Arch.
@Paul, have you used the closed-source drivers as offered by the restricted drivers manager? Often, those are the ones that will do it.
@Ann, why does Linspire not take off then? It has MORE proprietary codecs and drivers, yet it’s still lagging FAR behind.
@Matt, that’s true. However, some users can’t live without proprietary software, since their machine won’t function. That’s why Gobuntu hasn’t taken off yet: because it won’t work 100% of the time.
@Caio, I think I should have made that clearer in the point #5.
@Impact, True, it’s not as powerful as it could be. But no Linux distro is, except for the hard-core hacker ones that no newbie could use. Arch Linux has a different scale, one more geared towards hackers. Ubuntu is more geared towards non-hackers.
I think we can all agree that many distros offer great things to those who choose them. But Ubuntu has been the one that “regular” people have moved towards. If you asked 50 people why, you’d probably get 50 different answers. What I do know is that Ubuntu is raising the profile of Linux and open source. I do consulting for non-profits and I can tell you that in the past 1.5 years it has become easier to get them to listen when I talk about open source as a way to reduce overheads.
Some folks are concerned (rightly) because Ubuntu offers an easy way to use proprietary drivers and codecs. My thoughts are along the lines of “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. In many cases, users already have a machine that they want to try Linux on and that machine needs those drivers. As time goes on, machines are replaced and at this time, we as consultants or techy friends need to drive purchases towards manufacturers that fully support the free software effort.
Ubuntu is not perfect nor is any other operating system that I have come across. BUT every Linux distro is better than anything out of Redmond.
@Andrew, he couldn’t use his closed source drivers if his network wasn’t working correctly.
@Paul, is your router wireless? I have a pain rather often of having to reinstall Ubuntu and grab a CAT5 because sometimes the wireless drivers don’t work out of the box, and the only way to make them work is to get online to get the proprietary drivers. Same with your videocard.
nice article. debian, opensuse, and ubuntu have been the best linux distros that i have used. ubuntu (my current os) isn’t “perfect”, but people need something to complain about…so nothing is. ubuntu has stuff to work on, like free software only, but ubuntu is still fairly new. to me, things seem to be changing more rapidly with ubuntu. i see this article as one for people who don’t use linux already/all the time. some of the responses seemed a little too…i don’t know, calm down people. it is winDOHs vs linux not linux distro vs linux distro… they are all getting better with each release (not windows though :\)
Lots of whining going on here about Ubuntu for no other reason than that it is #1. Oh, you can say, “it does not work for me..sniff sniff…” but if Ubuntu does not work for you, then its a sure bet that no distro will. This is all hearsay anyway. Its real easy to post on some blog that this distro or that failed to work on their hardware, but its all just BS and nothing more than some FUD monger spreading garbage. Its such a pity that the Linux Community is its own worst enemy. It is for that reason, and that reason ONLY, that I shall stick with Ubuntu at all costs and avoid all other distro’s like the plague they are.
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@Jinx, that is a tricky part about Ubuntu: offline package installation is a pain in the butt. That’s definitely something that needs to be fixed.
@clintdub, that’s great persepctive right there.
@davemc, great comment.
davemc, by taking that attitude you are reinforcing what you perceive as the negative image of the Linux community. Ubuntu works for me, at least the times I’ve tried it, but it is NOT my preferred distro. For ease-of-use, PCLinuxOS has it beat hands down, and for reliability, useability, and just all-around quality, Fedora (my preferred distro) will hang with Ubuntu any day. While I’d like to see more standardization in some areas of the Linux world on one hand, on the other one of the great benefits of the Linux world is that freedom of choice that the different distros offer - rather than being stuck with a one-size-fits-all monolith as from the Redmond camp, if you don’t like a particular Linux distro you can shop around for another that fits your needs or tastes better. And while I’m happy for you that you’ve found a distro that you like and are going to stick with, I don’t really think you’re benefiting the rest of the community as a whole by referring to the other distros as “plagues”. Different strokes for different folks…
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