[TriLUG] Why is Ubuntu so increasingly dominant

[Magnus]

Andrew C. Oliver wrote:
> Why do you Ubuntu (please keep your comments positive about ubuntu 
> rather than negative about your prior distro)?


Ubuntu runs better on most of my Suns than any Linux distro, running
more up-to-date software packages than the other distros (I'm leaving
Gentoo out because calling it a distro is a bit of a stretch for this
purpose)

The distro fits nicely on ONE cdrom.  Other distros that are approaching
multiple DVD's could learn from this.

If I want to install a stripped-down system, I really do get a
stripped-down system.  But with one command line I can fetch everything
I need to have a GUI, full desktop, build environment, etc.

Like other distributions, Ubuntu doesn't include software with some
questionable licensing or patent issues.  But http://ubuntuguide.org/
walks you through EASILY fixing those shortcomings.

The community discourages offering support with a chip on your shoulder.
 So the people you inevitably end up dealing with tend to not be as
arrogant as the people you often end up dealing with in other distro
communities.

Although Ubuntu itself is generally on a rapid development cycle, a long
term flavor (Dapper) is available for those of us who don't want to go
through the pain of upgrading every six months or so.

When it comes to upgrading... I'm not going to lie and say Ubuntu is
painless.  But it generally can be done.  Some other distros I've used
have left me completely hanging in that respect.

Ubuntu doesn't play favorites with desktop environments.  I happen to
prefer KDE.  The Kubuntu flavor of Ubuntu handles it nicely.  If I
wanted another desktop environment, there are several flavors of Ubuntu
each specializing in putting the best possible face on a different
desktop environment.  Yes, the actual "Ubuntu" distro favors Gnome as
the default, but Kubuntu does not feel like a second class citizen to
me.  Most of the time I just intall Ubuntu-server on a system, edit
/etc/apt/sources.list to reflect what's in Ubuntuguide, do one big
"aptitude install kubuntu-desktop build-essential [...]" and walk away
from it, with the main bottleneck being the slow cable modem speeds that
Time-Warner has imposed on us here.