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Seeing as you can recall as far back as before the "Enterprise" appellation to RedHat you're clearly a long-term user of Linux! If you've been using Linux for t

Seeing as you can recall as far back as before the "Enterprise" appellation to RedHat you're clearly a long-term user of Linux! If you've been using Linux for that long I'm pretty sure that all the distributions are basically the same, no? Technically they all draw from pretty much the same pool of code, with various different choices due to timing. And, if something isn't quite right you can always remember how to install things from source as we did in the "old days". Sure, there are plenty of differences, but these are mostly the equivalent of vim vs emacs - if you're good enough you can make either work. They're mostly just matters of personal preference. Though many users don't have the benefit of your level of experience. And, there should always be room for new users benefiting from Linux. So Ubuntu's tended to focus on being a Linux that works "by default" on the desktop and make sensible choices for developing in the Cloud.

mindcrime 11y ago
Yeah, I started with Linux about 1997 or so, and by about 2000 or 2001 was running Linux exclusively as my desktop OS. The distros certainly have a lot in common, but each has its quirks and idioms, and once you learn them, it's annoying to have to bother learning another. Like, once I've memorized how to do a lot of things with RPM and Yum, it becomes "friction" to suggest that I learn to do the same things with apt. I don't have any problem with Ubuntu, and I think it's fine for new users. I stick with Fedora really for two reasons: 1. The aforementioned familiarity. and 2. They are more ideologically committed to software freedom, in terms of not shipping things like mp3 support, where you have patent encumbrance issues. I have been trying to gradually shift my life to a place where I don't need that stuff at all, or where I do, I use OSS / free software to interact with it. I mean, I'm pragmatic enough to use VLC to watch DVD's, but I don't go out of my way to use any content that isn't in a free format, etc.

mindcrime 11y ago

Yeah, I started with Linux about 1997 or so, and by about 2000 or 2001 was running Linux exclusively as my desktop OS. The distros certainly have a lot in common, but each has its quirks and idioms, and once you learn them, it's annoying to have to bother learning another. Like, once I've memorized how to do a lot of things with RPM and Yum, it becomes "friction" to suggest that I learn to do the same things with apt. I don't have any problem with Ubuntu, and I think it's fine for new users. I stick with Fedora really for two reasons: 1. The aforementioned familiarity. and 2. They are more ideologically committed to software freedom, in terms of not shipping things like mp3 support, where you have patent encumbrance issues. I have been trying to gradually shift my life to a place where I don't need that stuff at all, or where I do, I use OSS / free software to interact with it. I mean, I'm pragmatic enough to use VLC to watch DVD's, but I don't go out of my way to use any content that isn't in a free format, etc.