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A good example is changing the system's time. While it should not be allowed by normal users on a server, on a laptop it would definitely make sense to allow normal user to change the system time at will, especially if the user travels a lot between different time zones.

In this case, the user would just have to change the timezone. :-)

But you're right, the easyness to change things on a system depends on where the system is installed. You mentioned a server and a laptop. The classical field of Linux' use, the multi-user system, does not dominate today, instead, one system is usually used by one user. Most settings should be changable easily, except those ones that can - abused because of a lack of knowledge, laziness, or stupidity - enable the system to get compromized too easily.

To increase "productivity" (in fact, comfortability for the average user), security barriers are abandoned step by step. For some of them, it really does not matter. For others, they are intended to where they belong, and they have their reasons (root privileges to administer firewall and server settings).

Nope, as it says in the article, users will be able to unlock "certain functions" as well as fine tune user privalidges. There's no mention of a change to the default security configuration.

It does, however, seem to say that Remote Desktop will be enabled by default, which strikes me as less than totally secure. Though it appears (vulnerabilities aside) that any prospective hacker will need to wait for your express permission before taking over your machine.

Your captain obvious speaking: there is a reason, and there's only one reason, that Ubuntu is now showing their alphas with Remote Desktop and simple user administration simplified graphically:

Business.

This is going to be an "LTS". Somehow, somewhere, sometime, Canonical is going to have to make some money. They want support contracts with the typical MS Windows+Office workplace, as an alternative to a Vista migration (yes, I do have heard IT people talk about that in the hospital where I work).

Help desk management will ask, "we unlock people's account and change their passwords on a daily basis easily with Active Directory, and we use DameWare [or, insert here similar program] to take over people's desktops. You've got that, and it works well?"

They don't want to hear, well that's somewhere in our repositories. They want to hear, it's on top of the new and stable feature list - even if that comes down to the same thing.

Canonical is going to market this. Their usual simple approach might very well work, Shuttleworth is not an amateur. It's, in my humble opinion, not the user community lnx rulez fanboy crowd that these features are added by default for.

I actually find the switch over to GVFS the most interesting bit, in a KDE 4.0 sort of way.

Well speaking of KDE 4.0 and Ubuntu in a sort of way, I find it odd that they have no hesitation utilizing a brand-new and unproven technology in an LTS release which is supposed to represent a stable and proven platform. Seriously, it's an alpha, I agree, but they're warning against using it with production files right now, and it's supposed to be LTS worthy in a couple of months?

But hey, that's just me.

Kubuntu will not be a LTS release this time around.

Why worry about the close release dates ? The last RC for Vista was released at the end Nov/start Dec, then the final was released in January. Whats so bad about that ?

oh wait......

You're right about the 'gets in the way of productivity' - I'd love to know what is more productive; having a secure system which might request the authorisation to run an application at a higher privilage level or simply just allowing an appliation to run, cause all manner of problems, hours of work down the drain - and a net loss of productivity.

Security to me reminds me of safety belts and helmets - yes they're not 100% comfortable or enticing to wear, but when you do get into a situation where the out comes could have been worse had you not worn it, you'll realise that it was only a marginal inconvenience when you consider the outcomes could have been alot worse.

Back on topic, for me, the issue has never been the quality of the distribution; I've always found the various *NIX (*BSD/OpenSolaris/Linux) distributions to be already ready for the desktop. What I do find annoying is the lack of commercial applications (running under wine would be ok, if it were a certainty that the applications would run everytime, all the time, and perfectly). As much as I love OpenOffice.org for example, it simply can't hold a candle to the ease of use of iWorks (Pages, Keynote, Numbers). The media player, Rhythmbox I had nothing but problems on the variety of distributions I've tried in the past.

The foundation has been laid, the distributions are already up to the standard I think would win over the desktop - heck, Ubuntu right now is already a Windows replacement. What is needed is better applications, more of them, and third party commercial software vendors like Adobe, Intuit, and MYOB coming out and putting their 100% backing behind *NIX (which ever distribution they end up choosing).

Speaking from past experiences with PPC X/Ubuntu 6.xx systems, I can assure you that having to save work, logout/login, change a minor setting or download and install a program update, logout/login is anything but productive.

In Xubuntu 6.06 a little authentication box used to pop open (ala OS X) and ask me for my password, but I could type my systadmin password till my fingers fell off and nothing doing. (Thanks unfixed system bug!)

So, a working system that allows me to authenticate on the fly without having to do a user switch or logout/login?

That's Productive.

It may be up and running in X/Ubuntu 7x, but I've been so busy I haven't had time to partition the one windows machine in the house and install it.

Hang on, I was going to support your case till I read this snippet. You're basing an operating system release of today on the problems you experienced on an operating system released 2006/06/01? I don't know about you, that is pretty pathetic justification(s).

I'm running Fedora 8 right now on this machine, and before that I ran Ubuntu 7.10; never saw a single issue like that. Everything worked wonderfully - and this is on a Dell Dimension 8400.

Sure, there are issues, but if you are going to raise issues of a product, actually USE the latest product and base it on that. Its like reviewing an Apple computer, claiming that Apples products aren't good, then later disclosing that you're running a PowerMac from 10 years ago!

Thing is, adobe already has support for FrameMaker on Solaris and up until version 7, AIX and the Mac. I just don't understand why they can't use the longstanding *nix experience they have and translate that into releasing and decently supporting more of their products on Linux and the *BSDs.

I am not going to pretend that I know Adobe's markets better than they do, but it seems to me that, taking into consideration what I mentioned above, and the fact that Linux is slowly but surely making waves on the corporate desktop, they are missing out on being the first company to release professional image editing solutions for Linux, thereby gaining a foot hold for what could become a very lucrative market and cementing their reputation as the leading supplier of said solutions.

Just my two cents.

From my casual chatting to people of a variety of backgrounds; if Adobe provided their products on Linux (or some sort of *NIX like Solaris x86), you would find there would be a huge number of people migrating to the said platforms.

People think that end users love Windows. End users hate Windows, what they like is the fact they can run the applications they like on Windows. If those applications were on *NIX, no one would be running Windows.

Gnome has had a VNC server for ages. They've added encryption but I don't see anything else new. Including a GUI VNC client is the new thing and I'm glad to see it.

It would have been more interesting if they had come up with something better than VNC because quite frankly VNC sucks the big one.

Correct me if I wrong, but I just downloaded Alpha4 and there is no such thing like Firefox3 ?

Eh? What do the alphas have to do with anything? The article is claiming that FF3 will make it in the final 8.04 release.

They've taken GNOME and added great improvements to it, it feels all intergrated rather than having another control panel. Their additions seem like they came straight from the GNOME team. Synaptic is fast and fits nice with GNOME as a package manager and it's simply the best distro for GNOME bar non IMHO.

"I have a question and I mean it, I don't know how else to put this, I am not trying to be arrogant. Can someone please tell me what separates Ubuntu/Kubuntu from other popular desktop Linux distributions such as Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, Freespire etc?"

From what I have seen, there is 1 major factor at work. Ubuntu actually has a marketing campaign behind it worldwide. The other distros do to an extent, just not as much as ubuntu. It is constantly in the news, for example, with Dell selling machines with ubuntu already installed. Ubuntu is more aimed toward the normal consumer, not businesses, though it most certainly could be used in that way. Ubuntu does not have the holier than thou attitude of say Fedora, where they discourage what people really want to do with their own machine, although the codec buddy is a huge step forward.

Well, whatever they do, it's working and it's working well. I am impressed to how many people know about Ubuntu. So well done on the Ubuntu team. I personally, do prefer KDE but GNOME isn't that bad either. I've noticed all the good programs seem to be written mostly using the GTK tool kit - GNumeric, The GIMP, Abiword, Gaim, that time machine-like data recovery program, GParted etc. I might give it another test run but I don't know if I stay with it.

From what I understand, if you're a KDE user you're probably better off with one of the distros you mentioned, not Kubuntu.

But for veteran Gnome users, I've heard the sentiment that Ubuntu is linux that they don't have to mess around much with, fiddle with, configure and maintain, they can just get straight to work.

For newbies to linux, ubuntu presents a highly polished and welcoming UI face, has a very friendly and helpful forum community, and will ship install CDs for free to anybody.

Absolutely nothing. Oh, you'll hear a lot of people stirring the gears trying to explain this, using lots of impressive words such as 'polish, 'uncluttered' and 'simple'. Some will even try to tell you that you have to fiddle less with Ubuntu than with other distros (a complete lie, as any browse through the Ubuntu forums will tell you), but you will not see a single feature or application that gives Ubuntu any advantage over any other distro. Ubuntu certainly doesn't have anything like YaST, and YaST isn't even really great.

And you'll also encounter a lot of "sour grapes" disparagement of it because Canonical doesn't push KDE. Speaking generally, a casual user does have to do less fiddling with Ubuntu. The Ubuntu maintainers don't do quite so many brain dead stupid things as some other distros. They try to think like a "regular user". And as already mentioned by drillsgt, they don't have the Holier Than Thou attitude which drives some distros to make certain things, of which they do not approve, more difficult for uninitiated users to accomplish.

I'm very much multi-distro, and tend to use Fedora and CentOS for my client sites because they work very well in multiuser business settings with a dedicated admin. So I'm not exactly an Ubuntu fan boy. But I do like to give credit where it is due. Ubuntu gets a lot of little things right, with respect to unsophisticated users, that other distros don't. And the Ubuntu forums are a joy to observe. I've never seen forums quite so helpful and friendly as those. As a Unix admin of 20 years I find it refreshing to see a support forum free of RTFM responses.

And of course the Linux marketing that Canonical is doing is invaluable to all of us. Even to those who frequently and jealously rag on Ubuntu.

Indeed, I see the number of people who disparage it, these days, as an unambiguous sign of its success.

For my part, I use it on my laptop, because no other distro I have used on it works as well. And I have used it on my desktop machine for an extended period and been impressed. For years I strongly disliked Debian and Debian-based distros. So Ubuntu really had something to prove to me. I was biased against it from the start because of its Debian roots. But it did win me over, which I felt was quite an accomplishment.

He, he, he. I didn't mention KDE anywhere in that post, did I? Why no, I didn't............. ;-)



In what way? I still see people having trouble with hardware and fiddling with X configs, and having trouble with Ubuntu's easy set up tools, in equal numbers to any other distribution such as Suse - if not worse.



In what way?



Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. The mythical 'ordinary user' rears it's head again, as if saying these mystical two words together is the magical answer to questions such as the one asked. I ask myself, when are people actually going to define this user?

Listen sweetheart. I'd hazard a guess that people taking the time to install Ubuntu, an entire new operating system no less, are not the kind of 'ordinary users' you have in mind. People who use computers quite a bit are not particularly 'ordinary' either. People who use computers are gamers, developers, users of office software, internet perusers etc. Ergo, there is no catch-all 'ordinary user' that you can claim that you're targeting when somebody says to you "Ubuntu doesn't do it for me."



For those of us who've experienced severe problems with EVMS when we don't even have EVMS installed, or the bold 'no ports open by default' proclamation that screwed up CUPS, we wouldn't agree with you.



Asus has done more for Linux desktop usage in the last couple of months than Ubuntu has since it started.



Not really. I'm old enough to remember that we've had lots of popular distros over the past few years that people have hailed from the rooftops. People point out that these distros aren't anything special, and then a few years later people silently move on to something else. We always seem to be in amongst a crowd of people who like to tell use how wonderful the emperor's new clothes are, and a handful of people have to cover their mouths and point out that, no, he is indeed naked.

You haven't been able to point out one single thing that Ubuntu can do any better than OpenSuse, Fedora, PCLinux or anything else you can get out there.

Yes, LUCKILY there is not that pile of poo Yast, in Ubuntu.

Some of the points that make Ubuntu a success.

LESS choice for the user out of the box.
A Live CD they can see works before they install
Add/Remove applications, (not just synaptic)
Great choice of fonts
Clear theme on Gnome
Update-manager.

Now, that last point is a very important one.
I can install an older Ubuntu, and start the update manager with a sudo update-manager -d -c
this will look for a more up to date version of Ubuntu. Yes, the whole system.

It will then download and install the new system, while the old one is still working. Then at the end, it will politely wait unti you finish, then ask for a restart to enable the newer kernel.

So, there you go, a properly working live updating system. I have not came across any other system that works like that on Linux distros.

RPM based distros like Suse, Mandrive, Fedora all expect a new install when they release a new version, I have never seen the update work correctly on any of these distros..... Now, don't come off with "it worked for me", if it did, great, show us. That is what Youtube is for.

Debian does this and has done this for years (apt-get dist-upgrade) since at least 2.0. Ubuntu can do this because it is built on Debian tools, specifically the god that is apt.

Edited 2008-02-04 19:04 UTC

The unfortunate thing is that Ubuntu has absolutely nothing to match YaST, and nor does any other distribution, as annoying as it can be sometimes.

You're kidding, right?

The unified "control every setting from one control center" tool is an idea whose time has come and gone, its usefulness now fully understood: not much.

If you refer to YaST's package installation abilities I can only express amazement at your naivete.

YaST is simply not interesting any more; its one-time innovations are now no longer unique. Since it has not received wide adoption, i.e. anywhere outside SuSE, it is doomed to eventually be out-coded and out-bugfixed into oblivion.

Nope. Ubuntu has nothing to match what you can do with YaST. Got that?



What on Earth do you think every other desktop OS has?

That sentence is just an excuse as to why Ubuntu has nothing that can match the configuration abilities of YaST. It's incredible. You point out something that Ubuntu cannot do and someone wades in and helpfully tells us that whatever it is isn't necessary, it's time has 'come and gone' or the number one on the list - Ubuntu is focusing on the 'ordinary' user who doesn't want to configure.



You do know YaST is more than just a package manager, and I'm still amused that people still like to throw around the old argument that RPM distros can't do package management.



That's really great, but Ubuntu still doesn't have anything that can do a fraction of what it does.



By what, exactly, because nothing else can do what it does? The reason why it hasn't been used more beyond Suse is because it really needs to be ported fully to a distribution, and that's a lot of work, but it doesn't alter the fact that Ubuntu still doesn't have anything like it, nor the tools that Windows and OS X have.

I would be fascinated to know what you think yast has or does that is so unique.

The goal of Ubuntu is desktop+easy.

Before Ubuntu almost all distribation were using KDE by default. I have nothing against kde (i use KDE myself and do svn up on truck every night) but it was not for everyone at the time, and even now, kde3 is much more ocmplex than gnome.

When Ubuntu came, they took gnome (ugly at the time), made it visualy OK (2004-2005 skin was not that great, but Human was nice in 2006+). After that, they made a really usable gnome distribution and in every versions they choose -carefully- things to add or not to keep the distribution as light/easy/intuitive as possible.

In 2004-2005 Ubuntu was "the international distro" that was focusing on language support, but now they are focussing on creating an alternative to windows.

8.04 will be an LTS, so no major update, but i hope to see a a well integrated timevault, the hotwire shell (fully retrocompatible with unix term) and something like http://www.iola.dk/nemo/ and other improvements like that.

The only thing i see that can be more popular that a well made easy/intuitive/complete distribution is a "facebook like" distribution, that focus on open content and integrate it everywhere.

As a (GNOME) user of both Fedora and Ubuntu, in my experience the biggest differences between them are the default themes and the locations of certain configuration files. Long-term support (LTS) is a definite difference - Fedora doesn't offer any, whereas Ubuntu does every so often. I'm always upgrading my desktop to the latest development packages, so LTS is irrelevant in my case.

Well for me it provides a Debian base (which is my preferred packaging system currently) with a predictable and steady release schedule. It gives me a concise way of seeing what "new" features are coming out and allows me to plan.

I have tried most of the major releases over the years. Each has their strengths and weaknesses. What Ubunutu has is a low effort threshold to get a working desktop and good publicity. Publicity and momentum should not be underestimated though.

I carry over my /home and /opt directory from release to release so the impact of the update is not major. Over time I tweak my workflow around new features, then when a new release comes out repeat. Predictable and low maintenance, I am weary of playing/tweaking with Linux and just want to use it more often than not. It is nice to have a machine where you can try the new stuff (like KDE4) but my day to day work machine is not a place to experiment anymore.

OK I will tell you my personal experience why I switched to Ubuntu. In 2005 I was using Mandrake (now Mandriva) 10.1. I had been using it since 8.2, and before that I had been using RH 6 and Caldera OpenLinux 2.

I really liked Mandrake for providing a nice easy to use desktop distribution that was nicer to work in than Windows. One problem I noticed was that after a release had been in use for sometime, scripts would break and it would become difficult to repair.

Also there were filesystem problems my ext2 partition failed and couldn't be repaired. However Mandrake was able to reformat the system as XFS on reinstallation and it worked OK after that. Later when I upgraded to a new larger hardrive, I installed Mandrake on it with XFS as the filesystem. It was fine for a while then the filesystem broke. I couldn't repair it or reinstall the OS with any other filesystem like ext2, ext3 or ReiseFS. I thought there must be physical problems with the hard drive and that it was toast.

I just happened to have an Ubuntu Breezy Badger 5.10 disk which I had got from Shipit to try out. It installed, using my selection of ReiserFS without a hitch. I didn't have a physical hard drive problem, I had a Mandrake problem.

With Ubuntu everything just worked. I used Breezy for a few months before upgrading to Dapper (Long Term Support) which I used for a whole year skipping Edgy. I had no trouble with the filesystem on that hard drive.

Last summer I bought a new cheap OSless system from Canada Computers that I reckoned would be just right for installing Feisty on and would be a good platform for all the Compiz OpenGL glitz. And indeed it was it installed nicely with ext3 (after Hans' arrest the future of ReiserFS seemed somewhat uncertain). Everything just worked. It is now upgraded to Gutsy and still working fine.

I am a total Ubuntu convert. I am sure that there are other Linux distributions that are just as good. However I am so pleased with my two years experience with Ubuntu on my desktop, it just keeps getting better, that I have become a loud Ubuntu promoter. OK I have had the odd minor problem, but they are usually easily solved by checking out Launchpad or the friendly and informative Ubuntu user forums.

It suits both the experienced Linux user that wants a reliable easy to use desktop system and the new user that's prepared to learn new stuff when they migrate from Windows or OSX.

Edited 2008-02-03 04:35 UTC

Of course everyone has their opinion. But here is mine.

Ubuntu is Debian. The problem that Debian has, as everyone knows, is the long time between releases. This is not as big of a deal as some make it out. Just think of it this way, Debian's releases are more like Ubuntu's LTS releases. They come every (approx.) 2 years, are extremely stable, very secure and up to date. But toward the end of the release cylce, they start to look old. For example, Dapper's Gnome is 2.14, Debian Etch is 2.16. The new Hardy will have Gnome 2.22. Debian Lenny, will most likely have 2.24 or maybe even 2.26.

Ubuntu though makes intermittent releases that always have the latest Gnome, though not always the latest software (since they have to constantly do a 2 month freeze before release to try to catch any show-stopping bugs). Debian is usually considered so old, because they do a freeze and are stuck there until all (or at least the majority) the release critical bugs are fixed. That's why a Debian release has such a high quality of packaging.

Ubuntu is great because it takes the base of Debian, which has over 15,000 packages, and then smooths out the rough spots as best they can, and releases it as a single CD distribution.

I'll put a point list.

1. Debian based. Fast, fantastic package manager, and stable set up.
2. Single CD
3. Gnome, KDE, Xfce flavored goodness.
4. Polishes Debian's rough spots. This includes things like firmwares for wireless cards, an easy to use program to install restricted drivers (nVidia, ATI, other wireless or tv cards).
5. Free CDs.
6. Packages, packages, and packages. Compare the software list that is already in the default repositories (main, restricted, universe, multiverse) and compare them to how many OpenSuSe has, or Fedora (though now that Fedora got rid of the Fedora Core and Fedora Extras and merged them (one of the best things they ever did IMO).
7. Marketing. It's been marketed everywhere.
8. Forums. This list obviously isn't in order, otherwise forums would be almost at the top. Debian as it stood before, had mailing lists, and usually they weren't overly friendly (though reading some of the flame wars of the past have been entertaining). The support forums of Ubuntu are phenomenal.
9. Synchronized with the latest Gnome. This is the one thing that Debian lacks. Which is really rather odd, because they almost always have the latest KDE packages ready for the stable releases. KDE4 is already in Unstable and has been in experimental since the betas. Gnome is usually pretty far behind. But that's due mostly to the way the Debian Gnome team packages things and Gnome's constant changing of what they call their libraries. For example, I'm sure the change from gnome-vfs to gvfs will create more havoc on the Debian packaging team. Well not as much as in the past, but hopefully you'll get my point (and not to point toward Havoc, he's helped out Gnome tremendously .)

That's pretty much my view of things.

In one sense, nothing. They all have effectively the same major software components available.

Ubuntu does, however, have a large repository (based on debian), it uses .deb packages and apt, apt-get and synaptic as opposed to RPM packages, it offers long-term support AND more bleeding edge versions, and it does have an apparently large following. I have found that, as far as applications, polish and "desktop experience" (however you would define that) goes, Ubuntu is similar to (certainly no better than) Mandriva & PCLinuxOS.

However, if you are looking at something obscure, that is new and not in the repositories (such as, for example, the sk1 drawing package with support for CDR files http://sk1project.org/ ) then you are most likely to find that such a project does support packages fro Ubuntu. http://sk1project.org/modules.php?name=Products&product=uniconv...

It may, or may not also support SuSe, Fedora, Debian less likely PCLinuxOS, but you would normally expect to see an Ubuntu package provided.

Also, Ubuntu has a large following, and if you have an issue, then you are reasonably likely to find other Ubuntu users who have had the same or similar issue, and hence more likely to find a solution for it posted online somewhere.

Just my .02c

sk1 only supports Mandriva. Your link points to their standalone UniConvertor app which has been ported to every major Linux distro as well as OS X and Windows.

For me as a system administrator
It is is easiest distro that can intall applications that you want when it comes to handling dependancies. If you cannot find the application on the "Install/Remove Applications" then you can extend the level of packages locations and if the tool didn't find your application, still no problem you can install it via "synaptic package manager". and if all of these didn't still help you would definetly find the supplier of the software posting a dpkg file to allow it to be installed.
For a single user with 2-4 computers at home this sounds not important, but for 30 systems to be supported it is very important to have a distro that won't waste your preciouse time.

Also, installing hardware proprietary software is a very very easy thing, just enable them from "Restricted Drivers Manager".

And finally the stability of ubuntu is felt by me and many others to be alot better than mandriva, 200% better than SUSE and more than 300% better than other distros for reasons only the programmers know about.
Good thing, you still can use any distro you like without being forced to use it; so stick with the thing that you like, and if you need more search the other alternative.
Good Luck!

By you and many others? Really? And you are a system administrator? Because me and many others that administer RED HAT/SLES Oracle boxes, feel that they are rock solid!

And 300% than other distros? Oh really? So you ve used Slackware? Because I really,really can't think of a distro more robust and solid than slack. But hey we are on OSNEWS and everyone is a sysadmin with millions of years of experience and we have used ALL distros and we know first hand.

PS. BTW if you are a sysadmin you don't care much about what distro you use, provided it has a decent package manager. Everything else is scripted. Well okay I admit that YAST(text based version) is bar none the best Admin tool for quick and dirty jobs.

I administer desktop linux boxes and not Oracle or any DB based linux servers. But for servers you are right nothing beat Redhat and Novell's OSs. Their OSs are certified for such applications, even hardware are certified.
I am sorry for not mentioning what kind of administartion I do; but administration is so heterogenous.