Heavily disagree. And unlike Jeremy I can rationalise that opinion!
- They have no clue on user exerience. The desktop and user interface is the ONLY thing joe public users really care about. Ubuntu spends no time on it's menu structures / namings or on the design (which looks awful!).
- Their package management is poor. You end up being upgraded by default to the newest releases - which is fine to a point but a) if I want to stay with an older release (I prefer the .04 releases - plus I dont trust this newer kernel) you have to fight it and b) it messes up the upgrade so much, a lot of my .04 rigs now report as .10 incorrectly... they need to fix their package trees and tagging
- The user support isn't wonderful. The forums have improved but they are FAR from easy to use (as an experienced forum user I have trouble at times) and the website is far from accessible.
Ubuntu has done a good job making a big noise about itself - but it's flashy, showy and gives Linux a bad name... it wont make us mainstream.
I keep saying that to go mainstream Linux needs 3 things:
- #1 a dedicated, funded, team to make a decnet stable base distro like Debian but without the huge waits (4month release cycle).
- #2 a good UI engineer to take a look at the layouts and designs and change a lot of it
- #3 some benefactor millionaire willing to promote and pay/support a distro into the mainstream. I know it is a free product but no one can trust it if there is not some sort of culpability....
I think it's easy to criticize Ubuntu for being less than perfect, but if you look at what they've done over the years, they have made impressive strides in terms of making Linux more usable, in many ways.
BTW, sorry for the post title - it should really mention Jeremey Allison, not Ubuntu, but I submitted it and then got busy and now it's too late to change it.
My girlfriend has wanted to install it since seeing me running Frozen Bubble.
Realistically, if users cared about all of the things you mentioned, they would care about a lot of other things as well, areas in which Ubuntu is quite strong. Package management is far easier in Ubuntu than in Windows, for example.
- They have no clue on user exerience. The desktop and user interface is the ONLY thing joe public users really care about. Ubuntu spends no time on it's menu structures / namings or on the design (which looks awful!).
- Their package management is poor. You end up being upgraded by default to the newest releases - which is fine to a point but a) if I want to stay with an older release (I prefer the .04 releases - plus I dont trust this newer kernel) you have to fight it and b) it messes up the upgrade so much, a lot of my .04 rigs now report as .10 incorrectly... they need to fix their package trees and tagging
- The user support isn't wonderful. The forums have improved but they are FAR from easy to use (as an experienced forum user I have trouble at times) and the website is far from accessible.
Ubuntu has done a good job making a big noise about itself - but it's flashy, showy and gives Linux a bad name... it wont make us mainstream.
I keep saying that to go mainstream Linux needs 3 things: - #1 a dedicated, funded, team to make a decnet stable base distro like Debian but without the huge waits (4month release cycle).
- #2 a good UI engineer to take a look at the layouts and designs and change a lot of it
- #3 some benefactor millionaire willing to promote and pay/support a distro into the mainstream. I know it is a free product but no one can trust it if there is not some sort of culpability....