Why do you use Ubuntu and what do you use it for...

[Optimal Aurora]

I am wondering... Well background info first, I am deciding on what I can achieve with Ubuntu. I have installed it before for in the most recent installment Hoary Hedgehog and every single time, I use it for a month or so and decide to try something else. On my personal desktop I use it for that, but I do have some problems. So I was wondering what do you all use Ubuntu linux for specifically.

Thanks... And please don't discuss any other linux distro in this thread except for Ubuntu...

[sapo]

I use ubuntu for everything.. just uninstalled my windows some time ago :p

I use it as a server to test my php codes...

Surf the internet...

Play ut2k4

Watch my animes and xvid movies

Watch, rip and copy dvds...

and other things.. but i spend the most part of my time floodind forums like this one.. :roll:

[pdk001]

im one of the anti-M$ and interested in linux world everythings
but i cant uninstall M$ because i have watching TV and playing a Starcraft game sometimes
they aint in the my machine yet

[Infernal]

i use ubuntu for a web, ftp, dns, ... server

[23meg]

i use Ubuntu for everything i can use it for. whenever i find a (near)-alternative to any windows app i have to use, i switch to it, and my must-have windows app list shortens by one item.

[NateC]

I've been Ubuntu only for the last two months, and still going ;) I use it for everything, including gaming.

[thorN]

I've had a lot of success with Ubuntu on the desktop.
It's very versatile, there's plenty of places it will go:


I use it for my home server, running Samba, Apache, FTP, SSH on a really old PC.
I use it on my desktop PC, however I dual boot with pirated Windows XP so I can play games.
I run it on an old laptop I got from eBay - openoffice flies (700 MHz, 512 MB) and I can watch DVDs too.
It will run a desktop on really old PCs, because it'll run XCFE too.
I've also used Ubuntu as a sort of media centre, since they had an old laptop. It's hooked up to a USB hard drive (full of music) and the net.


lol, not much you can't achieve with Ubuntu mate \\:D/

[GarySaved]

I use Ubuntu for Surfing, and word-processing.
My Wife uses it for surfing, and clipart and such.
Our kids just play games on it.

[jonrkc]

I use Ubuntu (and the distro I used before switching in mid-May '05 to Ubuntu) for writing, spreadsheet use, some graphics (including digital photos), occasional web-space work via FTP, LOTS of email, and sometimes (rarely) games. Every day I get my sole news sources from the Web: I never watch TV or turn on the radio because the biased or inane "coverage" and the commercials disgust me.

Since the originator wishes us not to discuss other distros in this thread, I will only say, without naming the former, very popular one, that Ubuntu is noticeably faster, somehow SEEMS more stable, and is just a lot more fun to use: I've hardly left my computer chair since installing it. I had wanted to go to a Debian distro for over a year because of the Debian insistence on open-source. Ubuntu presents a nice compromise for those like me who feel not technically savvy enough to embrace pure Debian, yet who are told clearly by Ubuntu which packages are really open, which are licensed with some kind of added restriction, etc. The Ubuntu motto of "Linux for human beings" appeals to me, too. The organization's generous philosophy appeals to me. Even the brown background appeals to me greatly: Finally somebody had the courage to break away from blue!

Going to Ubuntu was almost like getting a new computer. And that's why I made the changeover official a couple of days ago.

[sailor]

I use it on my laptop because I heard it would work well with minimal configuration. I use it for general computer tasks.
On my Desktop I am using Fedora Core 3.

[bored2k]

I use Ubuntu because it works. I can do whatever I want on it at it works. I also use it because its supercow apt powered. Period.

[Shakie]

I started using Ubuntu because I am a network analyst in a M$ network and I can only take sooo many crashes a day. ;-)

I have always been interested in the Open Source community and really enjoy the way *nix operates. I have tried many many flavors starting with Mandrake 7.1, way back when. Of all the distributions of linux, Ubuntu was right for me.

[davidmigl]

I installed Ubuntu because 1. As I had never had any experience with Linux, I wanted to see what it was all about and 2. Windows, with its antivirus/antispyware was just way too slow on a very old machine. The worst thing that could happen would be I end up formatting the partition Ubuntu was on but... Ubuntu is so much faster that w2k on that machine, and I have all but abandoned Windows on that particular machine. Also, an open-source multiplayer game that I enjoy (BzFlag) was Unix-based, but ported to windows. It understandably had a few bugs in the server client in windows, and I wanted to check out the original, native Linux build. So I checked 'server use' too - the machine is now partly BzFlag server. Ubuntu was perfect for putting lost functionality back into this old machine.

[trash]

Everything and the bottom line is that it feels like Ubuntu restored some lost freedoms in the world of software(M$ and AppleO$=oldworld IMHO)... It's not all about money either, Ubuntu develops for its users, something MS and Apple do not seem to do.

[SamH]

Home workstation (email, OOo, Firefox), Media center (grip, xmms, xine, realplayer), experimentation (tryng out apps I've never tried before).

I first loaded Ubuntu just over a month ago. It gracefully handled more of my hardware with no intervention than any other distro I had tried. And, it has converted me to GNOME (Not an easy task, I still like KDE). Also it introduced me to XFCE. I've got some old PCs at work that Ubuntu/XFCE may be able to revive (for free! :).

[ubuntu_demon]

I voted other :

I use ubuntu for my server that runs samba and azureus. Sometimes I use it for school too.I have used it for running hugin. And it is possbile that I need to host cvs/wiki/mysqlserver sometime in the future (I study artificial intelligence)

I use ubuntu also for my desktop : listening music, wathing movies, chatting, surfing the web, reading my email, playing with ubuntu, and sometimes schoolstuff like programming.

[Gsibbery]

Pretty much all of the above.

[Optimal Aurora]

I just want to let you all in on some of the results that I have gotten. I didn't put a shut off date on the poll so you can keep on voting, but this has showed me that I was wrong about somethings and right about others, when I switched to Fedora and back to Ubuntu although I like Fedora though...

I placed a similar thread on fedoraforum.org...
Ubuntu | Fedora
6 | 19 Server Fedora in server use for business though
24 | 22 Workstation Ubuntu is more popular and easier to use
14 | 13 Development Ubuntu is slightly better in the development department
41 | 28 Personal Desktop Ubuntu is better at doing what most people would like to use linux for
29 | 20 Media Center Ubuntu is for me the only one that most things work on when it comes to media players...
20 | 22 Stability Fedora is better for people that don't want to turn off their systems practically ever.
8 | 5 Others Ubuntu is good for other things as well...
Total number of voters at the time of this post
50 | 35 Ubuntu is easier to get help on than fedora, although fedora does have books and all on it, but those books can help you to use Ubuntu as well.

I didn't want anybody to discuss other distro here because I need a control environment to do my survey in and if I had people discussing other OS's and other versions of Linux people could have been forced to vote for things that they didn't really like to use or wanted to use, just to prove that one OS is better than another. I figured Ubuntu forum would be biased to Ubuntu and FedoraForum would be biased to fedora, but in my honest opinion, I didn't expect this big of a gap in certain areas like Personal Use and Media Center and Server use. I was wrong...

I would like to thank everyone who participated on this Poll...

Thank you...
Aurora...

[jonrkc]

Thank you for posting the pool (in both places). It would be interesting to see if the trend continued with a larger sample. So if you can keep both of the polls open for a few weeks, it will give a chance to find out about that....

[shortcircuit]

i use ubuntu because i get really bored really easy and it was my next distro after every couple of months

suse 9.1
yoper
fedora
gentoo
slackware
freebsd
gentoo again
DSL

ubuntu beats them all as a desktop and gentoo beats everything for everything else

[Optimal Aurora]

Thank you for posting the pool (in both places). It would be interesting to see if the trend continued with a larger sample. So if you can keep both of the polls open for a few weeks, it will give a chance to find out about that....

I will and I'll get back with you all on the results of both polls after 1 weeks time from today (Saturday)...

Later...
Optimal...

[momo66]

I use it for my main PC.
Internet
Chat
Email
Watching Movies
Supporting my parents and kids PC
Frontend access to Video server
VPN access to work
To be free from BG :-)

[logan2004]

i use it to play dvds(VLC) and Music(Rhytmnbox) in my living room on my tv. also f-spot for slide shows and and to make iso's of all the dvds i rent with dvd decrypter / dvdshrink.

evetually id like to get hl2/ cs:s and call of duty running on it

[Optimal Aurora]

I'm keeping my word and letting you all see the update figures... even with all this going on with fedora and redhat... Well, here goes:
fedora | ubuntu
29 | 8 Using as a server
33 | 33 Using as an office workstation
21 | 21 using as a development center
50 | 61 as a Personal Desktop
32 | 42 media Center
31 | 28 for its stability
3 | 10 for other features
Total chime in to the polls after a week were:
60 | 74 votes

so I'll leave you to come up with your own accessments...

[GTKpower]

I use Ubuntu for everything except games.

It's my everyday-use OS. Work, music, video, web, mail, etc.

XP is for games.

Life is just that simple. :wink:

[Gtaylor]

I use it because it's easy, powerful, stable, and up to date. I get all of the features I want with minimal effort as a moderate-experienced Linux user yet I feel perfectly safe recommending this distro to the technologically challenged. That and I like to run the distro that I think will still be in good shape 5-10 years from now. If Ubuntu stays on the course it's on right now, I forsee some great things.

[andlinux21]

I use it because it makes my ancient laptop run like a champ and to surf the net and impress my family and friends who dont know much about computers. :)

[lurah]

Ill use ubuntu for email, www surfing, irc and for some programming things.
My old 600mhz runs fine with this and i got pissed of win**** after 1000000*1000000 reboots and virus and trojans and...and...

[wirjo]

i use Ubuntu for everything i can use it for. whenever i find a (near)-alternative to any windows app i have to use, i switch to it, and my must-have windows app list shortens by one item.

Same here. If only Adobe made Photoshop for Linux... :)

[Sniffer]

More or less like above...

I use Ubuntu because it rocks...

Great as server
It's safe and stable
Mail, Net, Work, Develop

Yet i only use XP for Games....and for some developing (school work.....windows addicted...DAMN)

[Domhnull]

I use Ubuntu as my sole desktop system. Standard use, office-type and financial tracking, web, email, and music. I'm also doing development and artwork on the system. Plus I use it to play World of WarCraft. Other than my Ubuntu machine I have a couple Palm OS devices that I use.

[davidmigl]

I use Ubuntu on a secondary machine for all the "diry work" that I might not to mess with on my primary machine, such as converting tapes to digital recordings, running a game server, etc. The 233 MHz beast runs much better and faster under Ubuntu than Windows 2000.

Ubuntu isn't quite ready for work on my primary machine. To set up dual monitors in Ubuntu I had to read various tutorials and restore my xorg.conf from backup several times, only to find it still doesn't work. XP? 1 checkbox. ATI drivers just won't install ever since I installed KDE. No hadware acceleration in Ubuntu for me. Oh well, when they were installed, I couldn't adjust AA/AF anyway, making my openGL games look horrible compared to XP. Fonts don't smooth correctly. And since I don't have fan control software for Linux, my machine sounds like a hurricane when I'm in Ubuntu.[/rant]

Oh well :p Good ol' faithful windows!

[Optimal Aurora]

I use Ubuntu on a secondary machine for all the "diry work" that I might not to mess with on my primary machine, such as converting tapes to digital recordings, running a game server, etc. The 233 MHz beast runs much better and faster under Ubuntu than Windows 2000.

Ubuntu isn't quite ready for work on my primary machine. To set up dual monitors in Ubuntu I had to read various tutorials and restore my xorg.conf from backup several times, only to find it still doesn't work. XP? 1 checkbox. ATI drivers just won't install ever since I installed KDE. No hadware acceleration in Ubuntu for me. Oh well, when they were installed, I couldn't adjust AA/AF anyway, making my openGL games look horrible compared to XP. Fonts don't smooth correctly. And since I don't have fan control software for Linux, my machine sounds like a hurricane when I'm in Ubuntu.[/rant]

Oh well :p Good ol' faithful windows!
one reason I use Fedora a lot is the precious dual monitors... Hay it comes in handy to have two monitors sometimes and Ubuntu doesn't have the nice pretty gui window that lets you setup the system for dual monitors...

[dolny]

Installed it like a month a go. This was my last try with LInux - after:
- Redhat (don't remember what version - year 1998) haven't recognized my soundcard, no 3d, no Internet... looked ugly - removed after 2 days
- Mandrake - X server died a couple of times - for example after adding a font... hang-ups
- Fedora Core 3 - didn't like it, unstable and stuff... (compared to KUbuntu)
- Kubuntu - my last try, I decided to get back to Windows if this wouldn't work. Installed it and... WOW!!! Incredible...

I use it for all purposes. I booted Windows twice: once to play HL2 on decent speed, second time to export my email addresses.
I love Kubuntu. Thank you. I just wished there were some easy/good TV-players with recording options. Some equivalent of Winfast 2000XP bundled ones. They're not great but easy and do their job...and Linux should handle tuners better.

[Ptero-4]

I use Xubuntu to tinker with Linux in my Mac.

[ericesque]

My Ubuntu is for everything aside from graphic design and gaming-- tho I'm going to see what games I can get to run decently on Ubuntu here pretty soon. Someone listed UT2k4--which piqued my interest.

[Dominer]

I am using ubuntu...just to learn it and manipulate it...play with it...try to hose it and fix it

[0NeX0]

I have to say that i made the jump from slackware to ubuntu about 3 months ago and i can say that it is stable and more efficent in my Wireless Internet Buisness then slackware could ever be

[fluffington]

My primary workstation is running on Ubuntu. I use it for everything except for gaming (and I have a PS2 for that). I also have have Ubuntu on my web/svn server.