My Ubuntu 7.10 Experience

So I tried the new Ubuntu 7.10 today and for a long time I have hated Ubuntu for 3 reasons….1. I think that it prevents people from learning essential linux skills, they do not have to know how to add a user to sudoers or configure hardware via config files. 2. it uses Gnome, now I think Gnome is ok, but I feel very locked in a box compared to KDE. 3. You have to download almost all the apps you want to install, and being on dialup as many of you know, makes it very very hard to do. So really I do not hate Ubuntu in the sense that it is a bad distro, I think it is a good distro, but for me to make a system that I can enjoy to the fullest it would take forever with my current connection.

Kubuntu fixes the Gnome problem, and well #1, I don’t really think I can piss on a distro for helping people use something that can get difficult. In slackware I have had problems with suspending not working as it does in Windows, but I have not bothered to work on that problem. In Ubuntu it works out of the box, as does all my hardware… with the exception of my modem. The first linux distro I ever used was Slackware, I love the name and I like how it works. A user has to really learn to use the system because it makes you learn. I once heard someone say “If you want to learn linux, use Slackware” and I feel it is a very true statement. You can of course learn Linux on any distro because it is linux, but GUIs and web interfaces don’t teach you the skills that in many cases are needed. If you have packages you are less likely to compile software. I cannot remember the exact details of the situation, but I remember sometime last year I had a horrible problem with a system, and I ended up having to mount multiple partitions and do a lot of tricky stuff in config files to fix the problem. Had I been a sole Ubuntu user, I might not have had those skills when I needed them.

Every distro has its place, and many are not for every user. I have been told, “slackware isn’t linux” or “slackware doesn’t have packages”, “slackware gives you nothing to get started with” and all of those comments came from people who havn’t really used Slackware. If you do a full install of Slackware you get a ton of packages. Linux Packages has a few thousand packages and they are all for Slackware. Sure, it isn’t the 23,000 available for Ubuntu and they don’t do dependancy checking, but dependancy checking it’s always a good thing. I have rarely ever installed a package on Slackware, I usually compile the software and very very rarely do I ever have any problems with a compile. As far as it not being linux, Slackware is the oldest existing linux distro and I seriously doubt that will be changing and it has stayed that way for a reason.

I plan to use Ubuntu, and I am going to install the new Kubuntu to see if I like KDE on Ubuntu or not. Gnome has improved since the last time I used it for more than 5 minutes, so I can probably deal with Gnome. Right now my laptop is quad booting Slackware, BackTrack, Windows XP, and Ubuntu. I have one free partition left that I will put Kubuntu on probably. So far the only OS I havn’t been able to multi-boot off the BackTrack LILO config is Fedora 7, which is a shame. What is also a shame is that my hard drive on the laptop isn’t larger, I would love to have 10 distros to boot to, just for fun….

I suggest you read this very well written article that was recently released about Slackware and Ubuntu, more slack though.

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