Re: [vox] Why Ubuntu, Kubuntu?

[Jeff Newmiller <jdnewmil@dcn.daviMAPSs.ca.us>]

Bob Scofield wrote:
> I've noticed from reading Distro Watch, and reading the LUGOD lists that 
> Ubuntu and Kubuntu are very popular.  I understand these to be Debian 
> offshoots.  Why are these so popular?  
Is like Debian with a better installer and access to newer revs of software.

The better installer is supposedly in Debian unstable, but I got tired
of living with broken system every few months to get recent revisions.

Note that the reason Ubuntu/Kubuntu can release stable versions faster
than Debian is that the Ubuntu targets successful compilation on a much
smaller range of hardware than Debian does.  That is, someone writes
something that makes nonstandard assumptions about how the hardware
or compiler works (but it compiles on x86 and that is all the developer
has), and then Debian tries to compile it on 680x0 architectures for
example and it breaks, and there is a much smaller pool of people
willing to debug those problems than getting it working the first
time.  Thus, software won't migrate to stable because of lack of
support for the less common platforms.

> (I had a Ubuntu live CD once and couldn't get it to work.)
Live CD? I thought they only made Live DVDs.  They make an
Install-Only CD that requires that you install it on the
hd in order to use it, and a DVD that you can run without
affecting your hd.  To be honest, I was not as impressed
with the Live DVD as I was with the CD install.

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