Hi, have been using Fedora Core for awhile now. It is the main distro I have learned on. But I have been thinking about trying out something new to see what else is out there. Ubuntu was voted the best distro of the year so it seems some people like it. So what is there to like about Ubuntu? How is it different than Fedora? Thank you for any info and opinions.

While Fedora Core uses the ever-popular .rpm package management system Ubuntu is debian-based so it uses .deb packages (almost as common) and a system of repositories. The nice thing about this is in FC when you download an rpm file in Ubuntu you can use apt-get or Synaptic (the GUI frontend) to pull down the appropriate package with dependencies from the server and install it for you. The other thing (and perhaps this is personal experience) but I found FC didn't like Loki installers for my games whereas Ubuntu seems to "JustWork(TM)." If nothing else try out the live CD and see if you like the Gnome configuration and fire up Synaptic to see how you like that then decide for yourself

You can use apt and synaptic on Fedora Core to achieve the same thing since they are not just for Debian based distros. Fedora Core also has yum and yumex which can do the same thing that apt and synaptic do, so you are spoilt for choice.

As for trying Ubuntu, get the live cd or install it on a free partition and judge for yourself. Sometimes a distro can be good for someone but others may have bad experiences, so its essential to always make your own judgement.

Thanks. I have been using synaptic with FC so I know about that. Good to know that it works with Ubuntu. I am sure you are right, just get it and jump in to see how I like it. I didn't know it had a live CD, that makes trying it out even easier.

I use RHEL4 at work and I have used FC also. To me, the whole system of repositories with Debian/Ubuntu is MUCH superior.
Equally important, I like the basic Ubuntu/Canonical approach more than any other I have seen: An unambiguous committment to free software--with paid support offered from Canonical.

The only reason I have RHEL at work is it is the only "officially-supported" Linux (At least there IS Linux support here!!!) I will likely convert the office box to Ubuntu in the near future.

I just installed Fedora 5 and decided very qickly that Ubuntu was better for me. The Fedora code 5 ran a lot slower and rpms are a pain compared to apt-get. Yum is great but it seems that there is more apckages to choose from considering apt-get.

My opinion is try it and if you do not like it then switch back to Fedora. You will need to learn the sudo command for it replaces root (Well is root.) But it's bacially the same as the root command. All you have to do is enter sudo before any command that requires root access.

So is there no root user? Does it still want a password for root access?

The ONLY flaw in Ubuntu is disabling the root user by default......ONLY FLAW!!!!!....

Easy to fix:

sudo passwd root
enter user password at prompt, then new root password
in the GUI menu, there is a setting to enable root user to login in an X session.

There is a root user, but you don't have the password. Specifically, you create a user with full root privilegs by way of sudo, to keep any odd scripts from coming along and abusing your root privileges without a password.

It's surprisingly easy to get used to.

I dislike the way sudo is implemented in Ubuntu and whenever I setup an Ubuntu or Kubuntu system I disable sudo and replace it with a proper root account. All you need to do is give root a passwd by doing "sudo passwd root" as the first user logged into the system. After that run visudo as root and comment out the lines that enable all users in the admin group to run commands as root via sudo.

RPMS are not a pain if you use apt/synaptic or yum/yumex. I have seen this kind of comment lots of times and I think its incorrect because dpkg has the same problems as rpm if a package manager is not used to resolve dependencies. As for Fedora Core having less packages, this is correct, but you can add more repos such as dag, livna, freshrpms, newrpms etc to your yum sources. After adding these repos you will have access to thousands of extra packages for your Fedora Core system. There was talk about uniting some of these repos into one huge repo but it doesn't seem like it'll happen anytime soon.

My dear fellow Fedora Core lover and seeker of Ubuntu,

Please read my review about Ubuntu at this very website and you will see that Ubuntu is just easy. See, I am not computer versed and I just want my computer to do what I want it to do without having to dig and dig and dig for answers. Ubuntu is intuitive, is easy to update (seriously man, apt-get just beats the panst of yum and Debian's package management is so much more efficient and comprehensive than Red Hat's...) Ubuntu is stable, and works out of the box without little fiddling. I wish I were geekier to start playing with Debian proper but for the time being Ubuntu is just fulfilling my needs...

The root's password issue is easy to fix as well as creating a regular user account with little or low priviledges so if that's detaining you from using Ubuntu rest asured that you will end up with the same accounts used by any Fedora user: a root account, a user account and a superuser priviledged account... Of course, if you want to eliminate that superuser priviledged account you can do it...

Lack of a firewall? Come on! you can do a simple:

and be done with it...

But of course, why use the console when you have synaptic?

Man... Just install Ubuntu and you will love it...

Disclaimer: I still love Fedora Core but until I see that all bugs are resolved and until I see glowing reviews of this distro will I install it on my box. For the time being I am Ubuntu inclined and I have also purchased two t-shirts, a polo shirt and a mug...

when you install use expect then hit enter, that way I was able to get a root user, but I'm still having problems booting my system so I'll get back on that

Also do not forget Ubuntu's excellent help and documentation projects, unparalled.

And what about their community? Sweetest people around!

don't forget automatrix, which basically negates the need to go through the ubuntu guide and copy/paste all the commands into the terminal; it will automatically install your video drivers, all firefox plugins, mplayer and all its codecs, and many other things. VERY nice and makes ubuntu even easier to use.