Distribution in linux

i92guboj · 08-09-2009, 10:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by joeBuffer

It still would take some effort.
Like I said, I don't know all about different distributions, but I tried BLAG ... it was Fedora. The setup was Fedora. Every component of it is Fedora. It has a default theme and default background, a few things thrown in, and it's only free software.
I guess I'll stick with distrowatch and keep from complaining about the lack of a number.
I also don't truly consider (and I could be wrong in thinking this way) Ku/Xu/Edu/U/*buntu to be different distributions. You install one, you use apt-get or synaptic, you have *buntu.

I know very litle about *buntus to be able to speak anything meaningful about them. But this definition is kind of dangerous. Making a distro is not just getting your merith, but also about absorbing the doses of pain associated with supporting it.

I have no idea if the ubuntu team officially supports xubuntu, kubuntu, mint and whatnot, but if they don't, I am sure that they will feel not too good if people with a non-standard ubuntu setup (i.e. kubuntu) come asking for support about things that don't really belong into ubuntu. Or maybe they are really close, but even then, considering the average level of ubuntu users, even a simple UI change can make it a pain to give support to all the *buntu derivatives.

A case I know much better is the Sabayon vs. Gentoo thing. Nowadays is getting stranger, but in the past people came to the Gentoo forums asking stuff about Sabayon, some of them even deliberately modified the info they supplied (=lies) in quotation and code tags so that we could not detect that they were running Sabayon instead of Gentoo. An idiotic thing if you ask me, because that only makes the problem even harder to solve so they were really pissing on their own bed. The problem is that people really don't understand that DistroX can't give support for DistroY, no matter how close they -theoretically- are. Once you get under the hood, even the silliest thing can completely invalidate the support because there's no way to predict how your OS is going to behave, unless you are using a sane setup.

So, in my humble opinion, only the distro makers are the ones to say what IS their distro, and what ISN'T their distro, since at the end of the day, they are the ones supporting it and getting all the pain, and not just the merits.

joeBuffer · 08-09-2009, 10:50 PM

From kubuntu.org:

Quote:

Is this a fork of Ubuntu?
No, it is an official part of Ubuntu. All our packages are in the same archives.

From edubuntu.org:

Quote:

How is Edubuntu related to Ubuntu?

With the release of Edubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron, the way edubuntu is defined and packaged changed. Edubuntu is now the normal ubuntu installation base, and an extra cd comprised of the add-on packages.
Edubuntu and Ubuntu both have the same release cycle, which occurs roughly every six months. You will find that many Edubuntu developers are also developers for Ubuntu.

They're both Canonical-maintained. Both (with apt-get or synaptic) give you the same repositories and packages. Xubuntu isn't official and Canonical-maintained, but the same thing is true of it, also. I probably shouldn't have used *buntu, because things like the studio version, or the Mythbuntu I don't know exactly what they do.

joeBuffer · 08-10-2009, 03:57 PM

From kubuntu.org:

Quote:

Commercial support for Kubuntu is available from Canonical and from many of the companies on Ubuntu Marketplace.

From xubuntu.org (Xubuntu is not Canonical-maintained):

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Xubuntu users around the world tell us that support and administration expertise are critical in ensuring the success of their Ubuntu deployments. In addition to community support and partner support, Canonical, the company behind this Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution, offers enterprise-class support.

From edubuntu.org:

Quote:

using Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, you can use Synaptic, and install ubuntu-desktop, kubuntu-desktop, edubuntu-desktop, xubuntu-desktop.

Code:

joebuffer@ubuntu:~$ apt-cache search ubuntu-desktop
edubuntu-desktop - educational desktop for Ubuntu
edubuntu-desktop-kde - educational desktop for Kubuntu
kubuntu-desktop - Kubuntu desktop system
ubuntu-desktop - The Ubuntu desktop system
xubuntu-desktop - Xubuntu desktop system