forbes.com — he world already has several free versions of the open-source Linux operating system, but Shuttleworths version, called Ubuntu, undercuts them all on price--and works better, according to many respected sources.
Sep 6, 2006 View in Crawl 4
dogfurnaceSep 6, 2006
^^@everybody: Right on guys, thanks for the advice.
brundlefly76Sep 6, 2006
....and owned by Microsoft
williamdyerSep 7, 2006
How's that hair across your ass?It's simple: If you use Ubuntu, you only buy support for desktops and servers that need it. Ubuntu is accumulating user very quickly because there is no difference between "commercial" Ubuntu and free Ubuntu, except for the support. I expect this strategy to work well for Cannonical, and it will force Red Hat and SUSE to follow suit.That's a huge benefit to the open source community. Ubuntu has taken the completely free approach you used to have to go to Debian, Gentoo, Slackware, etc., and packaged it with easy to use installation and update management - exactly that pieces that used to be the value proposition for "commercial" distributions. Ubunutu has also shown that "partially free" has few if any benefits. Good!
sailorSep 8, 2006
Good point...I agree that it is a good "first timers distro" but as users become more advanced they may want to look at more "traditional" distros such as Fedora Core, Debian and Suse.I think PCLinuxOS is even easier than Ubuntu and has more things pre-configured (such as mp3,video codecs, nvidia driver avail in repository). As with all distros, some things work better in one distro than another...experiment with different distros and find one that works for you. Don't just stick with the "darling" of the distor wars or you will be limiting your self.
sailorSep 8, 2006
I understand that Fedora works well on Thinkpads...and you are right ATI needs to get with it and make better drivers. They are making progress though and there are drivers...just not as good as the Nvidia linux drivers.