I had always heard of the ubuntu derrivative projects; Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, nUbuntu, Ubuntu Lite, Ebuntu, zUbuntu, and Ubuntu-Libre. The interesting that I just noticed recently, however, around the time of the release of Dapper, was that three of those projects have become official Ubuntu projects. They are Xubuntu, Edubuntu, and Kubuntu.
Xubuntu is a great derrivative. It’s goal is to use XFCE4 by default, instead of GNOME (With Ubuntu), and minimize the system requirements on the computer to be installed. And it truly lives up to its name. Recently, somebody brought me an old computer which had Windows 98 on it I believe. You’d start it up, and it’d whine about the Hard Drive being corrupted, I checked the Hard Drive and it looked perfectly okay (From the outside of course), I’ve had older, in fact, I do, have older hard drives (With a mere 4 gigs) on which I installed Ubuntu Server today and it was perfect, it is perfect actually. So since I figured this was a great time to advertise linux, and since I had been talking to this guy about linux for quite some time now without him knowing what the heck it was, I figured I’d show him this way. So he agreed with me on installing linux, after all, it’d be better for it to work somehow than not at all. So I downloaded DSL because I hear it’s really lightweight and small, and it’s also Debian based, I ran it, but I had some problems. So after a while I finished downloading Xubuntu Alternative (More on ‘Alternative’ later), and I burned it on the last CD I had (I feel like the guys at CDFreaks :’(), and after some time I put it in the computer. Waited an hour or so and it installed.
Knowing linux for a bit now, I knew not to get my hopes up but the guy couldn’t help it, he was over-excited, though I kept telling him not to get them up because of what could happen (Which, we never know what can happen). It loaded, and dumped me at XFCE4. It was great. Xubuntu is a minimalist version of Ubuntu, so it had very few programs. So, after some deep thought, I had a manly urge and I was brave enough to take my the Ethernet card out of my brother’s computer. I slid it into an empty PCI slot on the old computer, started up, activated eth0, and it worked. I downloaded the !easysource generated sources.list (Which you can find here), and ran sudo apt-get update, then started installing various programs. Now, I was running a pretty complete system. I figured to install GNOME because it’s a more complete environment and possibly easier for newcomers, aside from it’s bulky size. After installing it, it ran great. I figured it was a bit sluggish though, so I sudo apt-get installed openbox obconf for openbox, then did openbox –replace so that openbox would be my default window manager, over the maybe-bulky Metacity. And it ran great.
Kubuntu is almost identical to Ubuntu as well, except this one, unlike Xubuntu which uses XFCE4 and Ubuntu which uses GNOME, Kubuntu uses KDE as it’s default desktop environment. In my opinion, I feel a lot more comfortable with KDE (Though I don’t mind any other Environment, and I used to like GNOME more). I feel it’s a bit more complete, and more developed. I guess you can say, “QT is to KDE as The GNU Group is to GNOME, and Cannonical to Ubuntu”. In other words, it seems as if when there’s some sort of financial back up there’s more initiative, sometimes. The GNOME developers in my opinion talk and plan too much more than they develop. But anyways, like I said, the only difference between this and Ubuntu is that it uses KDE as it’s main environment. I don’t think it has less system requirements (Highly doubt it too).
Edubuntu aims at being an Ubuntu derrivative for education purposes. It comes with a nice theme, GNOME comes as default, and is loaded with various academic applications, both for children and teachers/professors. This project should be greatly supported, as Linux in Schools is a movement that has been anticipated and supported by various organizations. Ubuntu for schools, Edubuntu, is probably the perfect candidate, and I’m glad it’s being supported by Cannonical.
Ubuntu-Libre is a new project which I just recently heard about. It’s endorsed by Mark Shuttlesworth and will only use FSF approved software.
nUbuntu is a livecd distribution with various network security tools, in other words, this is a Pen-Testing LiveCD much like Pentoo, BackTrack/Auditor, PHLAK, and many others. I’ve tried it myself and it’s great. It uses fluxbox if I remember correctly, and is pretty snappy and responsive, you should definately try it.
zUbuntu is an Ubuntu derrivative aimed at the zSeries mainframe, as they say it’s a highly regarded platform the by Linux Industry.
Ubuntu-Lite is a derrivative of Ubuntu to be used on very old computers, in other words, it’ll have very low minimum requirements, lower than Xubuntu’s. Why do I say “it’ll”? Well, the project has a nice site and apparently some people have tried it themselves, but at the moment there’s no official place to download this from, and development seems pretty much non-existant. However, I’d be one of the many people who would like to see this project pick up and get developed.
Ubuntu is really popular. It’s probably the most popular distribution in all time, if not that, then the distribution which has become the most popular in the shortest amount of time. The distribution which has built a very stable and great community which has advertised it, supported it, developed it, created art for it, and over all maintained it. Ubuntu is truly revolutionary and a historical event which will stay in the history of Linux for eternity.
Ubuntu certainly does seem to have a lot of momentum. With Vista looking more and more like a disappointment, I wonder if it will chip away at Microsoft’s market share.
Yes, hopefully that happens. Many companies are trying to achieve that (Novell, Cannonical, Linspire, Red Hat, and many more), and the only thing we need is for people to at least know what linux is. To know why it’s different than windows and why it’s a potential alternative. Most people here in the United States are behind the world in the knowledge about linux. Unfortunately, since this is a capitalist, corporate country, they’re still big into the “Buy Your Operating System”, and regard linux users (If they even know what linux is) as hobbyist or extreme computer users, in other words, not something normal. To them it’s either Mac OS X or Windows XP. I’ve heard that other countries/continents such as Europe, South America, Africa, Asia, and many others have already adopted linux and to them it’s normal, and that’s great for them, they’re making use of their available resources. However, I believe that the United States plays a big role in the success of linux and if it were to adopt it somewhat, it’d benefit linux a lot. So hopefully the linux companies start doing more advertising to inform the population on just what linux is.