Look, I think that Ubunutu is a great distro. No really, I do. But I am not all that clear what would make me drop SuSE or any of the others to make this my default?
A long time ago, in an analogy far, far away, a battle was being waged. It was not, as some might tempt you into believing, a confrontation between good and evil. Nor was it precisely an economic revolution – an overturning of all that has come before. These predictions have, of course, been made before. And on the eve of every battle, they are made again. So if we close our eyes, just for a moment, and believe…
A giant software empire stands poised on the brink of world dominion. Their rule is not a benevolent one. OEM taxes cripple the populace and DRM spies are everywhere. Spyware bandits terrorise innocent citizens, while malware and viruses run rampant. Both the police force and health-care system are on the take. They provide no public welfare, and run their own protection rackets on the side. The people suffer, and yet the Empire, concerned only with its own profit, spends its budget on propaganda and prepares for the imminent release of its next operating system.
Many refugees have fled across the waves to iCountry, where everything is white, mayhap even translucent, and beneath the Empire’s mighty shadow, a band of daring rebels struggle to free the desktop. But the rebels’ main strength is also their Achilles heel. “Choice!” they proclaim, and ‘choice’ they offer. Deb or RPM? Vim or Emacs? Gnome or KDE?
And from time to time, rising up from deep within this pool of vibrant chaos, an occasional Champion will emerge. Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Patrick Volkerding, and lately, some might claim, Mark Shuttleworth. Many developers will follow their flag, many more will not. But for a moment in time, however brief, the light of Open Source shines strong.
Romantic, idealised, and contentious as this view may be – a certain amount of creative flair goes a long way to explain Ubuntu’s sudden rise to fame. We all know the story behind the distribution, but harder to explain is its enormous popularity. Much of this, I believe can be attributed to sheer Internet presence. When you hit a problem with Linux and Google for it – you’re as likely to come across the solution on Ubuntu’s forums as not. Or else the Wiki. Or perhaps someone has already scripted a workaround. Certainly, I myself was completely unaware of Ubuntu until I encountered a problem with dual monitors using Fedora Core 3 and went searching.
And now, it is April, 2006. 6.04, in Versionspeak. Six flight CDs have come and gone, and I have watched them all pass before me. Moreover, it has been nearly eighteen months since the first Ubuntu release, and a lot has been promised. So much so, that Canonical have decided to break one of those promises and delay the release of Ubuntu 6.04, now 6.06, in order to accommodate them. The next version of Ubuntu, codenamed ‘Dapper Drake’, is just around the corner. Will the rising brown star continue to rise? Or will burn up on entry with the Earth’s atmosphere, leaving behind nothing but a smattering of *buntu derivatives… Source: LinuxForums
[tags]ubuntu,drm,spyware,oem taxes[/tags]
