Why I love Ubuntu

[Gtaylor]

To go along with the Why I hate Ubuntu thread, here's the Why I love Ubunbut thread. I'll start:


It runs. Very well :)
I had used Debian for a long time on servers previously and now I can run a rock solid derivative on my own personal machines with the same reliability.
The community is great and it's so easy to get involved with development.
It obviously has great potential.

[NateC]

Why I like Ubuntu:

- User Friendly
- Gnome by default
- Based on Debian (my second favourite distro, Ubuntu being #1)
- Good community
- Large Repositories
- Comes with mostly all the packages I need
- Fast
- Easy to customize
- Detected all my hardware with minimal work in the terminal
- Fast, and simple installer
- Fits on one CD
- Has a lot of potential

[desdinova]

For me

ONE DAY ONLY to replace a Suse server (home use) and get a usable desktop as well.

Excellent range of repositories and software.

Good communication with developers

[manicka]

For me

ONE DAY ONLY to replace a Suse server (home use) and get a usable desktop as well.

Excellent range of repositories and software.

Good communication with developers

Exact same scenario for me, Just love Ubunutu

[poofyhairguy]

All of those tasty Debian packages!!!

(my motto- "installing programs from source is the devil.")

Nice brown themes!!

Lack of buggy GUI tools!!!

And you guys and gals, the community.

[gil-galad]

Gnome and gnome. A focused desktop that comes with an almost perfect selection of default apps.

[sonny]

I love Ubuntu cuz:

It's fast; (I tried Xandros; that is a really slow distro).
Ease of use.
Looks great.
The name and the meaning of it.
And last but not least: The community.

[scourge]

This seems like a good thread to post my first message in.

A few months ago when Hoary wasn't yet finished I downloaded the Warty LiveCD, tried it and liked it immediately. So I decided to get rid of my Mandrake 10.1 Community and install Ubuntu. It installed nicely, but when I booted the OS for the first time it failed to start X, nagging about my graphics card or something (it's GF 6600GT). I tried to mess with XFree86.conf but Warty didn't accept my beloved su command and told me to use sudo. That was it for me, I thought: if I'm already having problems it's not worth it getting it to work.

I was trying a lot of distros back then to find the perfect Linux, so I constantly kept an eye on the new releases. So when Hoary came out I thought I'd give Ubuntu another try, and damn, that time it did work and I haven't been looking for a new distro after that. I've also grown to like sudo now, and I don't want to go back to using su.

Ubuntu is the first distro I have used that isn't RPM-based and KDE-based. I always wanted to try Debian because I knew the package management was superior to RPM, but when I looked at Debian.org I saw that the last stable version was years old (a huge turn-off to an average user like me). The reason I doubted Gnome is because years ago I had tried both Gnome and KDE in Red Hat 6, and Gnome just sucked back then. Well, not anymore, Gnome has made some excellent progress.

Apt-get is the #1 reason why I love Ubuntu, along the fact that the distro fits on one cd. I have a 100Mbit Internet connection so it's obvious that I like to install even the huge apps directly from the online repositories instead of messing with cds. No more dependency hells; I remember having to install 10 or so RPMs just to get one frickin' application working. Sure, apt-get/dpkg has dependencies too, but they are almost always handled automatically.

[kvidell]

Why do I like it.. hmm..
Not because of gnome... no, I don't even use it...
Not because of synaptic... I don't even use it.. (I use aptitude and apt-get)
I don't even like it on desktops... and it's been failing me as a laptop distro (IPv6 breaks Cisco Aironet wireless cards)...
I donno. It's just nice. It's a clean distrobution that does a lot of things right and just simply works.
I'm going to have to recompile my kernel on the laptop to get wifi to work... but that's not really a big deal to me at all...

Ubuntu is what I thought Debian was going to be when I first started using it. Not to say there's anything wrong with Debian... I used it religiously for a very long time and probably still would if I had a desktop computer right now (Alas, I have only my laptops and a server... Both laptops are Ubuntu and the server is Fedora C3)...

I think I just like how simple it was to install and I like it's clean and refined apt repos more than Debians hay-wire ones. (They were haywire in my opinion, I donno. Too much uncertainty).
And I even say that with the knowledge that I for a long time used Breezy. I felt that was more stable than Debian had been getting.

I'll probably revisit Debian at the next major release but for now... Ubuntu for my laptops and... well... I don't know what I'll use on desktops.
Not ubuntu though, tried that, didn't work :) hehehe.

- Kev

[tristan]

* As per desdinova, I was able to get a fully functional box within a day, after completely frying my previous MDK10.1 box (and that took me weeks to get just right). Fast easy install, perfect hardware detection.

* Slick, fast and polished gnome interface. "Gnome done right".

* Easily configurable and upgradeable (apt-get is a joy after rpm).

* Excellent community. Probably the best I've yet encountered. Hardly any whingers, lots of constructive discussions and help.

* Let's not forget the ubuntuguide, probably the best and most important linux help document ever written.

* I love the spirit of altruism which Mark Shuttleworth has instilled into ubuntu. Using it doesn't make me feel like a cog in someone's business plan.

[derrick1985]

It's fast
Fully customizable
Runs on my old 250mhz computer
1 CD
Has a Live CD that is great for showing off Ubuntu and seeing how it will work on a pc before installing
Apt+Synaptic, no more RPM hell for me!
It's FREE
Great community support
Very easy to use

[student]

I love it, because it changed my opinion about linux.
For a long time, I was convinced that linux was for people that want to much. My opinion was that an OS should do it's work, and let me do my work. A sort of co-existence. I always thought that the work you have to put in getting linux to do what you want, wasnt worth the result you got. (something like making bookreports for school when I was young).

The shipped cd gave me a new reason for trying linux once again.
After running the live-cd, I immediately installed Warty. After reading the forum's, I downloaded Hoary, and after that install, I deleted windows.

I really want to thank you developpers for changing my mind!!!
Ubuntu gave me the initial power I needed to make me want to learn using my OS once more.

Thx ;-)

[Ali_Baba]

I like Ubuntu a lot also.Its easy enough to use for a linux newbie.Hardware support is good and its also stable.Synaptic and Apt are excellent programs! I also like ubuntu's idea "Linux for human beings" :)

[aysiu]

I love it, because it changed my opinion about linux.
For a long time, I was convinced that linux was for people that want to much. My opinion was that an OS should do it's work, and let me do my work. A sort of co-existence. I always thought that the work you have to put in getting linux to do what you want, wasnt worth the result you got. (something like making bookreports for school when I was young).


I think whereas Windows takes a lot of time to install, Linux takes far more effort. If I reinstall Windows, it takes me over two hours to install it and re-download all of XP Service Pack 2 and keep restarting Windows after every security update. Then, I have to spend time installing all the software I want. It takes quite a bit of time.

Installing Linux usually takes less than an hour, including software download. However, my Windows installation is built specifically for the hardware I use and vice versa. All the drivers are ready to go. Everything's set up. Each Linux installation usually needs the printer set up, the screen resolution set up, or the DVD player set up.

There's also a learning curve. Some of the Windows stuff takes less time for me to do because I already know how to do it. The more often I reinstall Linux, the faster the installation goes.

For example, the first time I installed Linux, my screen resolution was terrible and I thought it was just Linux. I had to do hours of research to find the fix for it. Even then, I didn't realize there's a semi-standard solution that doesn't involve a download. Now, if I see screen resolution problems, I know to immediately go as root or sudo into /etc/X11/xorg.conf or the XFree equivalent, and fix the configuration file for HorizSync and VertRefresh.

I guess the question of Linux v. Windows difficulty in set up is really a question of whether you want to pay a company (Dell, Gateway, HP) to set up your hardware with the OS or whether you want to set it up yourself.

[poofyhairguy]

I guess the question of Linux v. Windows difficulty in set up is really a question of whether you want to pay a company (Dell, Gateway, HP) to set up your hardware with the OS or whether you want to set it up yourself.

DING DING DING DING.

Some one give this poster a cookie.

Thats the biggest problem as far as "ease" goes. Since MS forces the big computer makers to ship only Windows (or lose OEM prices), you can't get a pre set up Linux box like you can a windows one.