You’re right when you remark that a lot of people just install a distro and say everything is wonderfull. I’m an end user – there seem to be few of those in the linux community – I haven’t used windows in my house for a very long time.

In a way Ubuntu does what Apple does so well. Ask no questions, use Sane Defaults. But things can be configured differently for those who want to anyway.

I dispute this. Mandriva’s main + contrib package count is somewhere around 13,000. Ubuntu’s count including universe is rather similar, AFAIK – maybe a little more, but certainly not ‘significantly’.

“and I ran into the problem of urpmi not resolving dependencies correctly on common software with no unofficial packages mucking up the process.”

Please specify exactly what package. Preferably, file a bug at http://qa.mandriva.com/ .

“Every linux distro is customizable on any level from the kernel through X.”

This isn’t exactly true, at least not in a really useful way. Sure, you _can_ customize just about any distro in any way, but at some point it becomes basically indistinguishable from running LFS – you lose all the benefit of actually using a distro. The degree to which you can customize things – and the ease with which you can configure things – without losing the benefits of running a recognisable distro is an important way to distinguish between them (and basically Gentoo’s only area of strength compared to anything else at all). To take your example – sure, you can install anything from source on any distro (this is not really true, but let’s take it as a rule of thumb), but then part of the whole _point_ of running a distro is to save yourself from the arduous task of building everything from source, which is why all else being equal, people will likely prefer a distro with 15,000 packages to one with 500.

I probably should have said “a lot more stuff a lot _easier_”, because it would be unfair to say you can’t do most things as well on Ubuntu as on MDV (or SUSE). I do think the level of work put into making it easy to perform useful tasks on MDV and SUSE is significantly higher than on Ubuntu at present, which is the thought I was trying to convey.

The Mandriva repos are clearly inferior to Ubuntu’s. Their selection is significantly smaller and I ran into the problem of urpmi not resolving dependencies correctly on common software with no unofficial packages mucking up the process. Oh yeah and there’s the hassle of setting up your repo list which you don’t face in Ubuntu. Hey if that’s what a needed step, then blame the documentation!

This is all from the ’07 release. But wait there’s more…

The Mandriva community is smaller, less helpful. Ubuntu has not only great documentation of their own, including excellent quick start guides, but the forums are so active that it’s easy to find entire guides to doing anything that floats your boat.

And of course the slow release cycle kills Mandriva and Suse (dated software). It might be more polished and stable, but most of the major distros release every six months.

So if you want to know why Ubuntu is more popular than Mandriva (which are still very popular I might add) that’s it, Ubuntu has:

(1) better package management
(2) better documentation
(3) better community
(4) faster release cycle

And what is not a valid reason? That Ubuntu is dumbed down and limiting in choices. Every linux distro is customizable on any level from the kernel through X. The install process is quick and easy because *you* are expected to customize and install the software you want after your os is installed. I will never believe any kind of argument about one distro being limited in choice in comparison to another, because they all based on gpl software that you can readily find and install (even if by source from an svn checkout or the web).

Having choice and being forced to make one is not the same thing. But the blog seems to equate the two.

And I would never say that distro X > distro Y because “You can, ultimately, do a lot more stuff a lot better”. I can’t speak for all linux users, but I’m using gnu software. I’ve had no problem installing it and using it on any linux distro as well as FreeBSD! Distros are judged by community, documentation, package management, integration and polish of the base software, kernel patches… which brings me to my final point:

AdamW is right to criticize these meaningless fluff reviews based on “look, pretty colors!” Most reviews don’t mention anything important, they are simply reviewing the installer, and default wallpaper and themes. I’m just coming to Ubuntu’s defense because I can think of a few reasons why it’s #1. But with Mandriva’s now faster release cycle it will become a more serious contender again.

URPMI sometimes can break your system (it happened to me several times in the past when I used mandrake)

I’ve already tranlated to spanish and published on:

http://www.openkairos.com/content/view/205/1/

I hope that Adam don’t becone angry for that

BTW as you mentioned the installtion in particular I’ll remind the readers that early ubuntus suffered extremly long ncurses “graphical” installation process and the “WOW”s were just the same