With Ubuntu, it always seemed to me that it wasn't much more
than
Debian with all the Gnome boxes pre-checked, and with
pains taken to avoid
having users actually learn anything
about linux/unix computing. But it was
always still very
easy to install a different desktop environment using apt.
So,
for anyone who doesn't like Unity (which I confess I
have never seen), it isn't
a big deal to install KDE, Gnome,
XFCE, or whatever you
want.
I'm a Debian user with even less Ubuntu exposure. What
always puzzles me is that apparently for KDE you need a separate Kubuntu
distribution, for XFCE a separate Xubuntu distribution etc, with their own
package repositories if I'm not mistaken. The desktop systems should just be
packages in a single distribution. What happens if I want to install Unity,
Gnome, KDE and XFCE? Can I just mix the several sources or does that
introduce conflicts preventing the installation of some of them? Perhaps it all
goes smoothly, but even the suggestion that a different choice of desktop
implies you need a different OS strikes me as very
misleading.
Now - a couple of months ago, there was something
here on
Groklaw that indicated that Ubuntu accounted for something
like 90% of
Linux desktops. *That* is what I find shocking.
I knew that. It
seems that what I consider to be misleading is exactly what saves a majority of
people from getting confused. I think a lot of those people should be quite
capable of understanding their computer a bit better, but the entire software
industry, including Canonical, seems to be conspiring against that.
In
discussions about that I'm usually told that you shouldn't need to understand
how things work under de hood to be able to use a system. That's true, but every
car driver knows there's an engine under the hood, and even if they don't know
much about how it works they understand exactly what it's for, and that is true
for other major components of their car too. Understanding the basic distinction
between software and hardware, between OS, desktop system and application isn't
beyond most people. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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"Forcing" in this instance means having to take whatever's
in the box, let it install, there's no choice - EU browser anyone?
- then find out how it works enough to safely replace it with
your favorite. If one had the time one could sift thru all the
reviews and choose a suitable distro to avoid this.
I've "chosen" several distros over the years. I concluded Ubuntu
had been designed for an easy instal, familiar desktop to wean
people away from Redmond. I got tired of every kernel update
breaking my video drivers, and "forcing" a reconfig of my network.
Yes forcing, because without the reconfig my network was lost.
I'm currently running Mint, it saw my USB speakers without having
to be told, it accepted a non-standard DHCP from my router
without making stupid decisions of its own. I'll just have to
wait and see if something breaks at the next upgrade...
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