Testo inglese

My Story by Robert Boudreau

I should preface this by saying that I’ve been using Linux for a long, long time. I also should note that, in all that time, I’ve never learned to program, develop or hack anything. I can write basic scripts if I have to, tinker with config files when necessary, and work when needed with the command line; that’s about it. I’m a user, not a developer, hacker or guru.

I first came to Linux in 1995, after repeated headaches with the then new Windows 95. I’d heard about this Unix-like operating system that a college student had created and was giving away for free, and it piqued my curiosity. I’d like to say I just found a distro and installed it and life was grand, but it didn’t work that way back then. I instead had to download the source code, get a GCC compiler and all the other necessities running under DOS, and do it the hard way. But I was hooked. I started with TWM as a window manager, compiled a few apps I downloaded from a BBS, and I was off and running. Within a year or so, I’d found you could buy packaged versions at the local office supply, and my first was Red Hat, though now I can’t remember what version it was. Later came Debian, Mandrake, then SuSE. Debian and SuSE – now openSuSE – I’ve bounced back and forth with over the years, and for perhaps the last five or so I’ve pretty much settled on openSuSE. Until just recently.

Anyone who keeps up with with Linux news in recent years can’t avoid running across things about Ubuntu. The trolls may say what they will, but Ubuntu has made great progress in putting Linux into the mainstream, and today you can’t find many applications that, if they have a Linux version at all, aren’t packaged for Ubuntu. Many computer manufacturers, like System76, if they use Linux, it’s Ubuntu. It’s in schools, institutions, government offices, it’s just about everywhere. Even Google now has its own version of Ubuntu for its employees. What is so special about it? Why has one distribution become almost synonymous with Linux? It piqued my curiosity.

About two years ago, I actually tried Ubuntu – I think it was version 10.04 or 10.10, and frankly wasn’t that impressed. It was Gnome-centric for one, and I’m a KDE user. I read about Kubuntu being a KDE spin of Ubuntu, so I gave that a try. Sorry to say, compared to openSuSE or Debian it was too slow and bloated for my taste, so it too didn’t last long on my computer. In the time between then and now, though, Ubuntu has continued to become the port of first call for anyone looking into or trying Linux. Even one of my favorite video podcasts, the Linux Action Show, has become very Ubuntu-centric, Ubuntu gaining converts of the two hosts. So, recently, I decided to use the example of one of the hosts and give the latest Ubuntu a 30-day tryout, basically force myself to use it for 30 days and see how it felt after that. About two months ago I started on this experiment, and, well, here’s what happened.

At first, I was quite impressed with Unity, it was different than the Gnome 2 I remembered, but more impressive to me were the speed improvements since my last foray with Ubuntu two years ago. However, after just a week of using only Unity, I started to feel that, while I’d learned my way around it and most of its way of doing things, I saw it as more eye-candy than as a better way of working. While I liked some of the lenses and the way they integrated the web into the desktop, I felt overall the HUD was too slow, took up too much screen real estate, and, in particular with the menu integration, it was just too hard to find what you’re looking for. I know it’s a work in progress, in time it will get much better and more refined, but, as it stands now, it just doesn’t work for me and the way I like to do things. But, I was going to be fair, and stuck to my plan of using it for thirty days. Then I dumped it and installed openSuSE 12.1.

Something happened, though. There was an unexpected side-effect. I’d never even given it a thought while I was experimenting with Ubuntu, but it was there nonetheless, and, when I went back to openSuSE, it suddenly dawned on me. I knew why Ubuntu and its spin-offs are always at the top of the distro heap, why they’re so popular, and why they’re achieving what so many others have failed to: it all has to do with packages.

For those unfamiliar with openSuSE, it’s a great Linux distribution, one of the best. They have huge software repositories with just about anything you could want in them. But they have one serious drawback: you have to be real careful if you install software from any but the default repositories. If you do want to get a newer version of something, or to try some software from another repository, it’s often going to lead to dependency problems. Then there’s the problem of trying to find and install proprietary drivers or software that doesn’t fit the “100% Open Source” model, like the VLC media player. OpenSuSE has a great software search system on its web site, and you can almost surely find what you want, but it requires adding another repository that in all likelihood will cause conflicts.

I, of course, had learned to deal with these problems years ago, and could generally work around them to get the system I wanted, but it’s still a bit annoying. And, very often when it came time for a program upgrade, I was left having to repeat the whole dependency fixing all over again. After I did this last install of 12.1, and went through all the fixes that I needed to do in order to get my computer where I wanted it, it hit me. I didn’t remember having any need to do that in Ubuntu. Even when I added and pulled software from PPAs, there weren’t any conflicts. No dependencies to hunt down, nothing that worked before and then got broken. It all just worked.

That’s Ubuntu’s greatest advantage, why I believe it has gotten to be the default choice of not only new Linux users, but also many seasoned veterans. The Ubuntu packaging system is second to none. I doubt this is easy to do, but it seems to be a core duty of the packagers and those who oversee the repositories, that things are gotten right. It’s obviously why so many Ubuntu variants and spin-offs still use the Ubuntu repositories, they can count on that stability. In my opinion, it’s a major achievement what will keep Ubuntu in the forefront. Not the snazzy desktops, the coming web integration, or the constant pro and con media hype that surrounds it. It’ll be that rock-solid packaging system that will keep Ubuntu at the top.

When I realized this, what did I do? Installed Kubuntu. I did mention I was a KDE guy, didn’t I? What a difference from just two years ago! The latest Kubuntu (12.04.1) is as solid, fast and well-done as any KDE distro out there, and... it has those great Ubuntu repositories behind it. What more can anyone ask for?

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