Ubuntu is not Linux. Linux is not Windows. Then, Ubuntu is ...
Penguin Pete told us Ubuntu is not Linux in an infamous post he later deleted. An unrelated article tells you Linux is not Windows. Anyone bad enough at math will conclude a relationship between Ubuntu and Windows and secretly that’s the real subject of both articles.
Ubuntu is all about fixing bug #1 and I feel it's incredibly successful in that game. Ubuntu gets mainstream press coverage, hardware vendor support and popularity with not-so-geeky but experienced (and potentially influential) computer users to an extend unheard of in the free software world. Before Ubuntu, the public was split in two groups concerning their notion of computers:
1. Computers do what I program them to do
2. Computers are designed to run Windows Media Player
(Yes, this is a simplification!) Now, we are dealing with a (growing) group of computer users thinking, Computer are designed to run Windows Media Player or the Linux equivalent thereof. This is a big deal, if (and only if) you are trying to fix that famous bug number one. We owe this to some degree to Shuttleworth, Canonical and Ubuntu.
You can interpret this as Ubuntu is (like / similar to) Windows or Ubuntu is not Window depending on your point of view if you're into such questions. However, this doesn't tell us whether Ubuntu is actually any good!
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today's howtos
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Rant: Jan got the "bugs" part right
So I install Kubuntu to play with it (gack, what a mess they've made of KDE in the name of "simplifying" it). Then I decide I want to install GNOME alongside KDE. Made the mistake of picking and choosing pieces of GNOME to install from Synaptic, instead of installing the "ubuntu-desktop" meta-package like you're supposed to, and ended up with no sound in GNOME, and a windows manager (kdm) that just recycled, instead of putting me into either GNOME or KDE. (For some reason, gdm worked fine.)
The fix? Reinstalling Kubuntu and running "apt-get install ubuntu-desktop". Seriously, that was a whole lot easier than trying to track down the answers to my esoteric sound and kdm problems, and everything worked fine after I did it the "approved" way. Totally ridiculous. I didn't have those problems with Debian. If I did, I'd switch distros.
What Ubuntu's trying to do is shield the end user from the messy plumbing of the operating system by offering an easy installation process, a pretty GUI, and a bunch of graphical configuration tools. This is not unique to Ubuntu. PCLinuxOS, Fedora Core, Mepis, Mint, Mandriva, Xandros, etc. -- they're all trying to give end users this exact same thing, to varying degrees. Ubuntu's just been the most successful at it so far.
Remember those "Is 200x the year of the Linux desktop" articles that crop up all the time? OK, if that's what people seem to want, why do we complain when that's what they get?
(Ubuntu's already on its way to creating its own language to describe Linux. Note that I didn't install GNOME, I installed the "ubuntu-desktop.")