Okay so what are some good points in having Ubuntu over Windows 7?
In class we had to pick a Linux distribution to rival up against Windows 7. After some research I found that its pretty popular but I don't know much about it. In class we are working with Linux Mint, but I really like Ubuntu and want to learn as much as I can about it.
one major point why I would say ubuntu is better is that there tons of awesome people in the community that can help you if you have a problem or question. by community i mean their forum here http://ubuntuforums.org/
if you have a computer just pop in the live disc of the os and try it out for yourself its pretty easy. heres the site for their live disc and other stuff http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download
Ultimately, Linux is what you make it. Practically any distro can be configured to look the same, so don't be overly concerned with popularity or what comes pre-installed. Once you get past the surface, key differences are really around configurability and package management. Find one that works for you.
For my needs, Ubuntu fails on both configurability and package management. They've taken the path of dumbing down the system, so while "most" users won't need to change much, configurability has become increasingly difficult. It is also derived from Debian, so while it has a huge package library, can potentially have patches on top of patches (on top of patches in the case of Mint) so can start to get bugs unique to each level. Too many cooks in my opinion, I'd much rather have vanilla packages and fix problems with upstream patches.
So I choose to use Arch Linux. Possibly not a good place for beginners to start, but if you want to learn a few things and really understand how your system works and how packages fit together, it is rewarding.
I finally got Arch to run.. it point blank refused on my netbook.. xserver error no matter what I did including copying a so called working xorg.cong from another user.. WHY have they seen the need to muck about with the x server this time round?.. it was bad enough before without making a real dogs dinner of it the way they have for the 3.x kernel series. It seems there are problems with graphics drivers. There is a choice on my old dell, or vesa.. the "official" ati drivers just don't work, neither of them.. vesa does, and does well. I will have to get on their forums and have a talk about that sometime. My big beasty on my desk is now full on sabayon64 and blazing fast with it's gig of ram, lxde and 40% overclock. Debian killed themselves with gnome3 default, so I jumped ship and thats really saying something coming from me eh?..
I think theres not a lot wrong with ubuntu for starting out.. I have to admit using it on one of my "drag everywhere" lappys for it's fantastic wifi support out of the box and general convenience. You have to hand it to the canonical guys there.. they have made it work well on a vast range of hardware out of the box.. shame about gnome3 being donkey balls and I'm not even going to mention that abortion of a thing it ships with by default.. but lxde saves the day for me. I don't bother with the "L's" and "X's".. just core "alternative" install and then shove in the bits I want and need..
At the end of the day us expeienced users have our own ways and means.. Falko Timme has written some wonderful "get you started" guides in his "the perfect desktop" series for Debian.. just a shame he neer seems to use the same linux as we have just fought to install.. hahaha.. honest.. get half way through and wtf?.. what file??.. sorry dude,, not there....
So we learn.. Best "distro" for a beginner to install and play about with?.. I would honestly say right now Dream Linux is ticking most of the boxes. It's not that cuttig edge and it's requirements are pretty modest, and what I really like is how it doesn't morph into something else as soon as you try to add multimedia codecs or whatever. Shame Kororaa and Videolinux bit the dust, they showed a lot of promise in their 0.1-2 alpha releases..
I'm loving Arch Mick.. Midori browser and lxde on 256mb's ram and a 1 gig p3.. it's blazing fast and I'm impressed.. shame it took me 4 days to make it bloody work, but thats my fault for having 12 year old dell lappys with funky ati graphics hardware ay?
I've just got a new laptop with AMD/ATI parts in it. First time I've had to jack around with xorg.conf in years - it's an ATI thing. Catalyst used to be in the precompiled packages, but was dropped because ATI was unreliable at keeping up with the pace of the kernel and core xorg packages.
So I've had to work out that part the last few days. The wiki did have everything I've needed (fglrx module, aticonfig, [xorg111] and [catalyst] repositories), and I've in turn documented what I've had to do with the install unique to this laptop for others as well :) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Asus_A53T Actually, done mostly for my own benefit when it comes time for me to reinstall, but might help someone else along the way :P
Glad to hear you stuck with Arch. I inadvertently installed Gnome3 the other day too. What a mess. At least xfce devs don't feel the need to keep up with Microsoft's stupid design decisions.
Distrowatch is where i go to get distro's,i quite like zorin & dual boot that along with win 7 & xbmc from sabayon.Best bet is run virtualbox in either windows or linux & test run as many as you want.
There are many advantages of Ubuntu over Windows and one of the most common is the security. You do not need any kind of antivirus to install for keep your files and folder safe in Ubuntu. While in Windows, we require the same on high basis.
