Christian Ubuntu...

[jdenicholls]

....just why. Please God tell me why.

[LaRoza]

Ubuntu ME, Ubuntu CE and Ubuntu SE are the result of personal drives and niche markets and is possible by freedom.

Recurring Discusion...

[gilgongo]

Well, that doesn't answer the question, does it?

A better stab at an answer might be that Christianity is something that some people see as defining who they are - eg, "Who are you?" "I am a Christian."

Operating systems are similarly held by some people to be part of their identity. If you meet somebody at a party and they tell you they are a "Windows user" - how would you react?

See? Same thing. Kinda.

PS: Thinking about this a little further, it would seem that for some Christians, simple belief is not enough. They need to clothe themselves in a much "Christian" stuff as possible. Christian rock, Christian TV, Christian books, Christian radio, Christian mud wrestling... One can't help thinking that the noble pursuit of all things "Christian" might take the place of actually *being* Christian in the traditional sense, but that's another issue.

[tht00]

PS: Thinking about this a little further, it would seem that for some Christians, simple belief is not enough. They need to clothe themselves in a much "Christian" stuff as possible. Christian rock, Christian TV, Christian books, Christian radio, Christian mud wrestling... One can't help thinking that the noble pursuit of all things "Christian" might take the place of actually *being* Christian in the traditional sense, but that's another issue.

I entirely agree.

There's nothing inherently wrong about many of the things you mentioned, but pseudo-Christianity is a problem... and the surrounding of Christian imagery into one's life can replace the real stuff.

I quite enjoy some Christian rock, not so much the "contemporary Christian" -- that stuff is usually bad musically, lyrically, and sometimes theologically.

That all said, I don't think there's anything bad about a 'Christian Ubuntu'. The open source license allows repackaging and rebranding, and if branches like this can draw new users to Linux, I don't see how that's a bad thing. I do think the idea is a bit cheesy, but there's no need to make a fuss.

[lisati]

Why not "Christian Ubuntu"? To be of any real value, Christianity (or any other "religion" for that matter) isn't something that you should limit to something you "do" for a few hours one day each week, but should be something that you can carry through to the rest of your life.

[Darkhack]

A lot of people made a really big fuss about the joke distro, Whitebuntu (http://www.whitebuntu.org/).

I don't care what people do as long as they respect the proper licenses for their software (GPL or other). However, I hate seeing a double standard of it being okay for a Christian or Muslim Ubuntu, but not a Whitebuntu.

Oh, and if you are going to accuse Whitebuntu of hate speech, I have two response. One is to actually read the holy scriptures of Christianity and Islam. They are pretty gruesome. The second is to find me one official (by official, I mean part of the website, not some trash that was posted on a forum or wiki by a passerby) statement that would qualify as hate speech before you accuse them of it.

Whitebuntu's website reads more like a white-pride website in the same way a gay-pride website would. Yet having pride for being white is "evil" where as having pride for religion or sexuality don't have such stigma.

I'm not endorsing any racial or religious viewpoint in this post. I'm just providing food for thought when it comes to freedom and infringing on other's free speech rights, just because you disagree.

[original_jamingrit]

A lot of people made a really big fuss about the joke distro, Whitebuntu (http://www.whitebuntu.org/).

They mostly got in trouble for incorporating Ubuntu trademarks without permission from the trademark owners. Also the disrespectful nature of the distro, joke or no, wasn't something that canonical and ubuntu users wanted to be associated with. Sure, it was intended to be a joke in regards to the openness and free as in speech nature of open source. But it's still disrespectful. And being able to fuss about that sort thing doubly proves the point that they were trying to make.

The Ubuntu Christian Edition, and similarily Muslim Edition, and the Satanic Edition package, are just intended to include a couple of extra software and artwork packages. You may as well complain about church bulletins using paper. ;-)

[lyceum]

If it brings more people into the FOSS world, who cares? I think it is a great distro for families, and recommend it both to my Christian and non-Christian friends for the child safety features, and would not know how to set them up on Ubuntu themselves.