Customization in Ubuntu?

[pablogutierrez05]

Hello everyone,

I am completely new to Linux, and after hearing about it I was very excited to jump in, especially because of the "customization" it supposedly offered. I did a lot of looking around, mainly on youtube to see which
distribution I wanted to start out on. I thought Ubuntu looked really cool so I was almost positive it was what I was going to use, until I started reading different articles that said that lately the amount of customization in Ubuntu was becoming more and more limited. Is this true? If so, to what extent? And how much so compared to something like Linux Mint? I didn't want to use Mint because it seemed like it would be going back and using something that looked a lot like Windows XP. Does this lack of customization mean that it would pretty much be like still using a Windows or Mac OS X computer?

Thank you so much I appreciate your help!

I really thought Ubuntu was what I was going to go with.

[vasa1]

This is not really a support question, IMO. It will involve a lot of opinion. I suggest you use the Absolute Beginners Section for actual support questions and the Chat section for things that would elicit opinion.

[asus-user]

Hello everyone,

I am completely new to Linux, and after hearing about it I was very excited to jump in, especially because of the "customization" it supposedly offered. I did a lot of looking around, mainly on youtube to see which
distribution I wanted to start out on. I thought Ubuntu looked really cool so I was almost positive it was what I was going to use, until I started reading different articles that said that lately the amount of customization in Ubuntu was becoming more and more limited. Is this true? If so, to what extent? And how much so compared to something like Linux Mint? I didn't want to use Mint because it seemed like it would be going back and using something that looked a lot like Windows XP. Does this lack of customization mean that it would pretty much be like still using a Windows or Mac OS X computer?

Thank you so much I appreciate your help!

I really thought Ubuntu was what I was going to go with.

Hello,
What do you mean by customization? do you mean Desktop customization (icons, animation, desktop effects)?

If so, I think that it is a personal opinion to like a specific desktop settings or another, and with Ubuntu, you can choose whatever customization you like, there are many options for desktop environments (Unity, gnome, kde, xfce, lxde, ...), and you can use additional tools for further options (compiz, tweak, ...).
I worked with Windows 7, and switched for some time between Ubuntu(Unity, gnome, kde, xfce, lxde), Fedora(gnome, kde, xfce, lxde), Debian, Mint Debian, open SUSE. I wanted to try and see what I would like. For the last two years I settled down with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Unity + KDE).

In my opinion, Linux is not limited at all. It is an open source OS, this alone makes it more customizable than any other closed OS like windows or Mac. Millions of developers all around the world are working on developing Linux distributions every day, and even you can be part of that community some day. Any question is answered my means of hours if posted on their forums.

A big advantage also that it is free, and you can try most of them from a live cd or flash memory without installing. so just download and try it, install only if you like it.

[mörgæs]

This is not really a support question, IMO. It will involve a lot of opinion. I suggest you use the Absolute Beginners Section for actual support questions and the Chat section for things that would elicit opinion.

Yes, moved.

[jones quest]

Customization can mean a lot of different things... You can replace or remove pretty much any component in linux (from init daemon to file system to how you cursor looks like). You can compile you own kernel and make your own custom linux distribution.

But if your referring to how things look and feel, then the question is how much or how easily you can customize the desktop environment. In ubuntu the default desktop environment is Unity (since 11.04), and it is less customizable than gnome 2 (the previous DE). There are other desktop enviroments which have plenty of/too many customization options out of the box, for example KDE. You can still customize unity. Change themes, wallpapers, sounds, etc. And you can install applications that allow for more fancy customization (Unity Tweak Tool, CompizConfig Manager, dconf-tools). But out of the box customization is rather limited in unity. It's still leaps and bounds from windows and OSx, in my opinion.

You can install multiple desktop enviroments on the same OS, and select which one to use during login. This way you can try out multiple DEs and see which one you like best. Or you can go with a different flavor of ubuntu that has a different DE by default (kubuntu = ubuntu + kde, xubuntu = ubuntu + xfce). The choice of which distro to install does not depend on which DE you want to use, it more about which application are installed by default and how these applications are setup and maintained.

[grahammechanical]

From the start of development the intention for Ubuntu was for it to be for ordinary users. And Ubuntu has moved more and more in that direction. Ubuntu is still Linux. It still has a terminal. And Linux can be customized to the point in which we break the OS. Make backups of your data and be prepared to re-install. People often get in such a mess that re-installing is the easiest way of fixing the damage that has been caused.

If you are going to do heavy customisation keep records of what you have done so that if there is an incompatibility you can at least attempt to reverse the changes. Become familiar with Recovery Mode. You may need it. And remember, everything happens for a reason. Computer operating systems do not suddenly break. It is usually down to something we have done.

Regards.

[pablogutierrez05]

Okay, thank you to all of you. Just this response alone has convinced me to stick with Ubuntu, I know that if I ever get into trouble I know where to look!