I get a kick out of the insults that a Debian distribution can give you when you type in an incorrect sudo password. It’s a kick to mistype my password and for my box to come back with remarks like, “I’ve seen penguins that can type better than that,” or “You type like I drive,” or “Maybe if you used more than just two fingers…”  If you don’t know how to set this up, check here.

While searching online today to see if I could locate the actual file that contains the list of insults, I ran across some disappointing discussions amongst some in the Linux community. Basically, a number of people were talking bad about Ubuntu, that it is associated with fanboyism, and that Ubuntu is not a “real” distro. One individual went so far as to purchase a domain name of fuckubuntu.com, which ironically links to a site that advertises MS Windows ME, which was probably the worst OS that Microsoft ever came out with. My question to these people is that aren’t we all on the same team, working together to promote the open source movement? Are the reasons that we have each chosen to use Linux not similar in nature? Why don’t we then forge ahead as a community. That is one of the things that has attracted me so much to Ubuntu is the community support that exists behind the project, and not just with Ubuntu, but also with Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Fluxbuntu, and even nUbuntu. Community; it’s a great thing. So many are pushing this project to higher levels, and so many are out there supporting other users — it’s community supporting community. Isn’t that the essence of the South African word “Ubuntu”? From Wikipedia:

  • “Humanity towards others”
  • “I am because we are”
  • “I am what I am because of what we all are”
  • “A person ‘becomes human’ through other persons”
  • “A person is a person because of other persons”

Who am I to tell you how to think? These words that I write, take them or leave them. My opinion is to each his/her own. Not that you care, but a little while back, I started thinking about all of the Linux distributions that I have worked with just in the last couple of years. The list was larger than I had expected, and I will display it below, but the point of the list is to show that even after having used a number of distros, Ubuntu was what I eventually migrated to in the end… and that I did not immediately migrate to Ubuntu because it seemed like the cool thing to do; in fact, in my earlier experiences with Linux, I thought that Ubuntu sounded stupid, but that was simply due to my own ignorance at the time. What eventually attracted me to Ubuntu was the solid community base, the concept/idea behind Ubuntu, the meaning of Ubuntu and the sense of character that is embodied by both the word (“Ubuntu”) as well as the project as a whole, and the stability and flexibility that the OS has to offer. So, here is the list of distros that I have worked with, and contained in parenthesis () is the number of builds that I have performed with each of those distros. Keep in mind that Ubuntu was one of the last ones that I used, and was what I liked using the most. Each OS taught me something different about using Linux, and I would have to say that manual Gentoo and Debian builds taught me the most.

Gentoo (6 builds), Debian (2), SuSE 10.0 (2), FedoraCore 3 (2), FedoraCore 4 (2), FedoraCore 5 (1), PC-BSD (1), Agnula (1), DamnSmallLinux (4), Freespire (1), Ubuntu (1), Xubuntu (7), Kubuntu (1), Ubuntu Server Edition (2), and Fluxbuntu (I have now worked with Dapper, Edgy and Feisty versions of ‘buntu’s). I have also worked with a number of Live-CD distributions, some of which include Gentoo, DSL, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, BackTrack, Knoppix, Basilisk, nUbuntu, and Mandriva.

Linux has become a bit of a passion for me. Just can’t seem to let myself get too far from one of my computers. For more than a week now, I’ve been using the new Feisty Fawn Beta version of Xubuntu, and I’ve got to say that I am really impressed; great job Ubuntu and Xubuntu teams! Thank you for all that you do!