Posted by: Anonymous
[ip: 24.80.34.124]
on October 21, 2007 12:32 AM
I have to say your sliding over Debian as an also ran with no more than "Debian is important and unique" is a grave error. Looking at Debian will easily answer most of the questions in your 1st paragraph. It doesn't matter the commercial success of Red Hat and Suse, there will always be Debian and it will never be "complacent with all forms of predatory intellectual property ." Well, at least as sure as never can be in this world.
I wish the corporate distros all the good fortune they can garner. That said Free Software is too different a beast to ever be completely co-opted by the corporate world. They will try but the community can fork and fork and fork, the resulting offspring overwhelming the commercial world with value to everyone.
I can never understand the insistence by otherwise intelligent people on the ease of use of Ubuntu. Their install is no easier than many, many other desktop oriented distros out there and in fact more difficult than some. Ubuntu is a tremendous success story but the reason for that success is marketing, followed by an effective compilation of user forums, website, documentation, development and, yes, ease of use. Perhaps Ubuntus success is the unique combination of all of the above in just the right amounts. Certainly not because it is any easier to plug in their CD, install the OS and get support for patent laden file formats. If that was all it took others (PClinuxOS, Mandriva, Mepis, Linspire to name a few) beat Ubuntu to that goal both then and now.
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Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 24.80.34.124] on October 21, 2007 12:32 AMI wish the corporate distros all the good fortune they can garner. That said Free Software is too different a beast to ever be completely co-opted by the corporate world. They will try but the community can fork and fork and fork, the resulting offspring overwhelming the commercial world with value to everyone.
I can never understand the insistence by otherwise intelligent people on the ease of use of Ubuntu. Their install is no easier than many, many other desktop oriented distros out there and in fact more difficult than some. Ubuntu is a tremendous success story but the reason for that success is marketing, followed by an effective compilation of user forums, website, documentation, development and, yes, ease of use. Perhaps Ubuntus success is the unique combination of all of the above in just the right amounts. Certainly not because it is any easier to plug in their CD, install the OS and get support for patent laden file formats. If that was all it took others (PClinuxOS, Mandriva, Mepis, Linspire to name a few) beat Ubuntu to that goal both then and now.
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