The Linux Parasite

If you believe online forums and blogs, Ubuntu must be the most hated Linux distribution on earth. Not only is it funded by a millionaire space tourist and aggressive capitalist, it also exists (according to another Linux company's CEO) for the sole purpose of destroying all other distributions that exist on the market. It is reportedly a parasite that takes all the code from Debian without contributing much back and despite all its "software for humanity" talk, it keeps developing proprietary software solutions (e.g. Launchpad). Mark Shuttleworth's recent suggestion to synchronise distribution releases in order to coordinate bug-fixing work was greeted with a suspicion that he merely wants "to benefit from a lot of work that Novell and Red Hat are already doing in the enterprise space." So what makes people dislike and mistrust Ubuntu so much?

I don't think it's specifically Ubuntu that many people have a problem with. Throughout the history of our coverage of distributions here at DistroWatch, it was always the top one that some readers appeared to dislike most. If you've been around in the early parts of this decade, you might remember that Mandrake Linux went through similar pains - it kept getting a high number of reviews, but it also attracted more than its fair share of negativity on user forums. Interestingly, now that it acts from the position of an underdog, it has suddenly become the darling of the distro world, with excellent products and barely any criticism - but also hardly any reviews. It is the same as when a group of unbiased spectators watches a sporting contest between a clear favourite and an unfancied underdog - they will undoubtedly support the latter with all their might! It's the human nature.


The fact that many people dislike the top distribution is not really a problem. The problem is that many of these folks are extremely vocal on the Internet to express their opinions. While no intelligent reader will ever take them seriously, they do give the Linux community a bad name and discourage potential Linux users from joining us. Can anything be done about this? Not much, it seems. Until people start reading their own posts and realise that senseless negativity towards the most popular distribution is counter-productive, we will have to live with the unfortunate fact that the top dog will always be the most hated one too - at least in the more immature and destructive circles on the Internet.

Ed

In article ,
Anonymous writes:
> If you believe online forums and blogs, Ubuntu must be the most hated Linux
> distribution on earth.

Why are posting this to comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc as well as a
linux forum? Those that run FreeBSD probably have very little
interest in the infighting of the various linux gangs.

--
Steve
http://troutmask.apl.washington.edu/~kargl/