Malcolm Johnston wrote:
All this may be just me. I haven't had a decent look at distros like Ubuntu, and this is why I ask my question. What, in a nutshell, is their appeal? One one level it's all Unix, of course, but, given that, what are the appealing differences?
In the past few years Linux has gone past the boundaries defined by Unix. The area this is most noticeable is in the APIs used by applications programmers (it's not xlib anymore) and in handling the new ways hardware works (hot plug everything, suspend/resume). The appeal of Ubuntu and Fedora is that they are now beyond trying to develop a reasonable Unix-like operating system. They're now trying to produce a superb operating system -- one that is easy and pleasant to use, where new hardware Just Works, where single machine systems administration doesn't require command line genius. Older distros thought it was fine that I needed to be an expert in graphics to connect a projector. That's a fail for me, since my expertise is in networking. -- Glen Turner -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
