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From Shadowfax

Ubuntu Triumphant?

Ubuntu is in the ascendant. It sits very firmly at the the top of Distro watch ratings - with almost twice as many clicks as it's nearest competition. There is good reason for this. Ubuntu's stated aims are commendable. For Linux to become mainstream it has to be accessible. Sadly this has not been the case. Open Source software has often been poorly documented, convoluted and elitist. People searching for help are often treated as if they are thick - whereas they are more likely simply floundering.

It's not easy being brown

Ubuntu has done a lot to break the molds. Yet it still has a long way to go. When I first encountered Ubuntu I wanted to like it. Sadly, however, every encounter puts me off a little bit more. I'm sure a lot is personal preference. I really don't like brown for instance. Ubuntu's default Gnome theme is drab and depressing. In the case of Intrepid it verges on disturbing! But looks are not a good reason to dislike a distribution.

Back to the stone age

I'm sure some of my prejudice is because I'm a dinosaur. I cut my teeth on VMS. Linux lovers will shudder. VMS was heavily proprietary. But it was an excellent OS and very friendly.

I've used a number of commercial Unix flavours since. Enough to know that Unix too is great operating system. My encounters with Linux have been more recent. Open SUSE was my first foray. A bewildering array of packages, many achieving similar things with little guidance as to which was best. Ubuntu is clearly a better approach. A single CD install. A smaller, defined set of packages. It is a great ideal

But does it work?

Ubuntu "just works" say all the advocates. To start off with it seems that they are right. It installs easily enough. The basic package does what it should do. However, when you start to go a bit beyond that you realise that it doesn't. Not always. And when it doesn't things start to go awry.

I'm used to googling for error messages. For most errors you can find the message and an associated answer. With Ubuntu I find this somewhat less so. The problems are still there. Pages of people asking the same question. It is the solutions which are thin on the ground. Visiting Canonical's own site it is staggering the number of unanswered queries. Ubuntu may have made huge leaps on the desktop - but it seems that in the enterprise it is still lacking.

Here comes the cavalry

After Ubuntu I tried Centos. A good start - it is blue not brown. Here I find less hype. But also less issues. By and large Centos does 'just work'. It is a bit more conservative than Ubuntu - but the issues seem more under control. Of course this may be because Centos is directly descended from Red Hat - and Red Hat are the closest thing to Linux's own evil empire. But there is a reason why people pay for things. Fixing bugs takes time and time costs. In the pure open source world of course time costs enthusiasm not money. People fix the bits they're interested in.

It may just because Centos is closer to the commercial Unix variants I have used before, but on current experience if you want to do anything clever in the enterprise then you are better off on Centos than Ubuntu.