[Leaplist] Ubuntu rant - addendum

[Chris]

Steve Litt wrote:

>On Sunday 24 December 2006 15:13, Dan Cherry wrote:
>  
>
>>Dan Cherry wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>[abridged]
>>>      
>>>
>>Now, the clincher!  I go to remove the ubuntu supplied mozilla-firefox,
>>and find xubuntu-desktop is dependent on it!!!  Why in heaven's name is
>>the desktop basis for the distribution, dependent on an email client?
>>This is the kind of thinking I used to find coming from Redmond.
>>
>>Is this stuff common in FC6?  Methinks it may be time to overcome my
>>laziness and make some changes.  Ubuntu is up to about strike FIVE, and
>>isn't it 3 strikes and yer out ;-)
>>
>>I'd seriously appreciate hearing if there are similar software changes
>>within the Fedora distribution.  I'm not up for changing for the sake of
>>changing, but it might be worth it, if I can be confident that the
>>repositories will contain the same software available from vendor sites.
>>
>>Thanks again,
>>    
>>
>
>Hi Dan,
>
>Funny, I'm on the Mandriva Expert list, and have heard several recent rants 
>about Ubuntu and Kubuntu from people who switched away from Mandriva, went to 
>[K]Ubuntu, and then dropped [K]Ubuntu in disgust and came back to Mandriva. 
>Most of the rants were about the way Ubuntu handles root, but I think one 
>sounded a bit like your complaint.
>
>I myself evaluated Ubuntu several months ago during my annual "this time I'm 
>*really* gonna ditch Mandriva" evaluation. I saw no compelling reason to use 
>Ubuntu on the desktop -- I finally narrowed it down to SuSE and Mandriva, and 
>given my six year relationship with Mandriva, I went with the devil I 
>know :-)
>
>SteveT
>
>Steve Litt
>Author: Universal Troubleshooting Process books and courseware
>http://www.troubleshooters.com/
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>
>
>  
>
Well, I've been up all night with my wrenches and screwdrivers,
assembling trikes and bikes, skinning my knuckles, sipping
egg nog boosted with rocket fuel and falling into alternate fits
of despair and laughter at bad babelfish translations of cryptic
chinese assembly sheets with diagrams that do not even remotely
resembly the included parts.

And I realized something. I was having a great time. Don't mis-
understand, I'm sure the fact that I was doing something for the
grandkids didn't hurt, and the egg nog was a definite plus - but
I was having fun tinkering.

Which is what you used to have to do with Linux. Always. No
exceptions. And I realized something else. The distro I've been
using is no damned fun. Like Steve, I lean towards Mandriva, but
I've leaned a little further, towards PCLinuxOS. And I'm bored.
It's a vacuum cleaner. It's a microwave.  You punch the buttons
and it just works. It's an appliance.

Don't get me wrong. It doesn't make your Linux experience
wrinkle-free - Firefox still crashes - I've even tried replacing
the dread evil-license Firefox logo, but it didn't help. But overall,
PCLinuxOS just does what I ask it to.

Yeah, it's been accused of being a n00b distro. The kind of thing
you set up for your mom when you gets tired of the grandkids
visiting virus after virus on her XP box. But it's also the kind of
distro you might consider when you realize that every night
can't be Christmas night, and, while it's momentarily amusing,
that you don't want to spend your life surrounded by wrenches
and screwdrivers figuring out inscrutable things that go wrong
when you least need them to. There's not enough egg nog to
make that viable day after day.

It's got my vote. YMMV.

Cheers,

Chris