Ubuntu’s Contribution - It Just Works!

A summer 2010 lively debate on the Linux Journal website: Ubuntu Empire Strikes Back got me thinking about Ubuntu's contribution to Linux.

Granted all of the statistics quoted suggest that Ubuntu is not the largest contributor to the Linux Kernel and contributions from Red Hat and Novell / OpenSUSE far surpass those of Ubuntu’s Kernel contributions. Does this mean that Ubuntu has provided little or no contribution to Linux? I think not.

Let me say straight away that I have been a regular Ubuntu / Kubuntu user since at least early 2008 and although not perfect Ubuntu does have quite a bit going for it. To see what it does have going for it consider my below experiences with other distributions.

I started off using Red Hat around the year 2000 as I was trying to escape Windows 98. I immediately hated Gnome and try as I did I couldn’t get to like Gnome. Several applications that were supposed to work in Red Hat didn’t work for me. Switching to KDE was a nightmare. Red Hat said it supported KDE but I never managed to get it working satisfactorily. Whatever Red Hat’s good points were they weren’t nearly good enough for me to dump Windows, as Red Hat’s bad points had me going back to Windows again and again.

Eventually I got a copy of Mandrake (now Mandriva). Wow! What a difference! Red Hat with user friendliness and yes KDE worked out of the box! Amazing! Also the Mandrake Control Center made configuration really easy. I was hooked from the first boot. I even ended up spending some money on Mandrake to buy the Powerpack version or something similar and also spent money on the Mandrake website.

Now was Mandrake without its troubles? Certainly not. Installing RPMs was always hit and miss. Often packages wouldn’t work completely or required endless searching for dependencies. Even worse when I had to do an install from a floppy, before loading the install CD, the Mandrake utility used to create the floppy was broken. How did this ever get past quality control I wondered? What finally stopped me using Mandrake though was when in a later version the install CD process became broken. Yet another quality control issue. Now I knew Mandrake had serious QA issues. I found myself switching between 2 install CDs, all because the developers couldn’t sort this CD issue out amongst themselves before releasing the install CDs to the public.

My experience with Mandrake can best be summed as great with cutting edge stuff, but regular mundane quality control issues were simply not addressed by the developers. About this time many other Mandrake users also lost the Mandrake faith and Mandrake lost is number 1 distribution position, possibly for good. So Mandrake’s rise and fall were both of its own doing.

Mandrake install CD problems led me to switch to my second favourite Linux distribution at that time, namely SUSE. Now here was a polished product that came with two complete manuals, not the paperbacks that Mandrake provided. I always purchased the SUSE box sets in order to get the extra software goodies and the incredible manuals, which were worth the purchase price alone. I also loved that KDE worked perfectly.

I loved the SUSE YAST control center and although this feeling was not universal, it suited me perfectly. Wireless and encryption all worked well under SUSE (for that time) and could be easily configured with YAST. If I have one major complaint against Ubuntu is that it never adopted the excellent YAST control center. Without a control center new Ubuntu users are left alone searching for how to configure basis options. Even Gnome’s pitiful control center is hidden by default by Ubuntu and can only be accessed by editing the menu to show it.

Installing RPMs in SUSE was less of a pain than with Mandrake – but not much. The available software was generally better tested than in Mandrake and I had less experience of installing software only to find it not working properly. All in all SUSE was a good solid distribution that I happily paid hard cash for. The move to OpenSUSE was less good. Quality control issues immediately became apparent. SUSE for me peaked at around 9.2 / 9.3.

What turned me off OpenSUSE though was the software installation problems. I think it was OpenSUSE 10.x when the inability to install software reliably suddenly appeared. Previously software installation had been handled by YAST and worked perfectly. A move towards a new software installation method failed disastrously. Suddenly OpenSUSE users were swapping tips on how to get software to install. The Smart software install tool became popular and an updated CD had to be issued after several months in order to try and deal with the software installation problems. Even this didn’t work properly. I stuck with my previous versioin of (Open)SUSE from 2006 onwards until late 2007 / early 2008, but my distribution was steadily becoming outdated, as I refused to install the latest OpenSUSE version because it couldn’t reliably install software.

As with Mandrake, my experiences were not unique and OpenSUSE also fell off the number 1 place on Distrowatch.com, just as Mandrake had done earlier.

With OpenSUSE unable to reliably install software, I searched around for a new distribution. I tried PCLinuxOS as it was led by someone who had previously contributed some amazing software to Mandrake. Unfortunately PCLinuxOS updates were few and far between and it didn’t even support OpenSSL installation easily. Obtaining additional software was also not always easy – although unlike OpenSUSE it didn’t install perfectly. No PCLinuxOS was not for me.

About this time I was steadily becoming more aware of Ubuntu. Unfortunately as a long-term KDE user I hated Gnome, the interface and everything about it. Yes I had toyed with it before but the simple inability to turn off animated window minimising / maximising every time had me returning to OpenSUSE like a spurned lover. I eventually settled on Kubuntu. Yes, Kubuntu hid the main KDE control center, but I was able to fix that and show it with a few mouse clicks and CLI action. While Kubuntu’s KDE was not as good as OpenSUSE’s KDE the discovery of apt-get and Synaptic in particular was a real eye-opener. For the first time I was able to get ANY Linux software I wanted with just a few mouse clicks. No dependency problems and it installed everytime without the software install problems of OpenSUSE.

Now I know the Debian crowd are screaming that Ubuntu uses Debian’s software install etc, granted. However Debian has a reputation for being a pig to install and so many users would never install Debian, unlike Ubuntu which take just a few mouse clicks. What is more I am not interested in the free / closed software debate. Sure I prefer the idea of open software, but I also want to be able to use Flash, MP3s, Java etc as needed. So sorry Debian, but installation difficulties and a moral attitude towards closed software will always keep us separate.

Just as I started to get used to Kubuntu, KDE 4 appeared on the scene. Kubuntu took the short sighted view to adopt KDE 4 after 8.04 LTS. As far as I am concerned KDE 4 is a resource hog that requires a good graphics card and is less user friendly than KDE 3.5.9. I may hate Gnome but I hate KDE 4 even more than Gnome, yes even the later versions of KDE 4.x. The underlying technology of KDE 4.x may be superior to KDE 3.5.x but from a desktop user's usability perspective KDE 4.x is inferior to KDE 3.5.x. The decline in KDE users and KDE distributions since KDE 4.x attests to this conclusion.

Having been ejected from Kubuntu by the KDE 4.x crowd screaming “everything new good – everything old bad” I was once again looking for a distribution to love. By this time I had got used to the excellent software installation associated with Kubuntu and so however reluctantly it was Ubuntu for me. Yes, Gnome took a LOT of getting used to. I eventually learnt to ignore the hated animated window minimising / maximising issues. What attracts me to Ubuntu is its relative stability and easy to use interface. Yes, I still miss YAST and the Mandrake Control Center, but in return I am part of a wider community that provides excellent support for just about any problem. Support is only a Google search away. OpenSUSE, Mandriva and PCLinuxOS all have smaller and less active communities.

At heart I am basically a desktop user with a bit of LAMP thrown in from time to time. I am not a developer and so Red Hat is really not suitable for me. I want Linux to ‘just work’. Yes I don’t mind some CLI action but I expect to be fully installed and productive within hours, preferably less than 1 hour, not weeks / months of a fresh install.

The one thing Ubuntu has contributed towards Linux is its desktop usability, and yes I am certain I will dump Ubuntu sometime. Issues like switching the side the maximising / minimising buttons are on from right to left are simply not clever. My current problems with Ubuntu can be summarised as:

1. System Monitor utility freezes on a regular basis.
2. Ext4 is still too raw to be included in a primarily desktop distribution like Ubuntu
3. The Nautilus file manager is a joke and can never compete with Konqueror.
   

For me the benefits of Ubuntu are:

• Easy to install (and quickly)
• Easy to install additional software
• Extensive software repositories (yes I know many taken from Debian et al)
• Clean interface
• A wide and active community meaning that help is only a Google search away.
• For the most part, ‘Ubuntu just works’ for desktop users like myself.

So yes Ubuntu may not have contributed much to the Linux Kernel, but it has improved the user experience for many Linux users like myself, by providing a ‘just works’ interface.

Yes, I know others will find fault with Ubuntu and I share some of those complaints. There is however no denying that Ubuntu continues to dominate the Linux distribution league table, see Distrowatch.com, primarily because of its easy of use - not because of its limited Linux Kernel contributions.

Finally, the following Google search results show that Ubuntu easily dominates SUSE and Mandriva. Given that Red Hat has been around for a lot longer than Ubuntu it might only be a matter of time before the Google results for Red Hat and Ubuntu are reversed.

Red Hat 68,000,000 results
Ubuntu 33,500,000 results
SUSE 10,700,000 results
Mandriva 5,250,000 results

In summary, Ubuntu may not be the best contributor to the Linux Kernel or GNU / Linux software, but what it does it does well, namely to take these valuable inputs and present them to desktop users in an easy to use way. If you don't think desktop usability is important then I suggest you try Vista!