The “speed up your distro” article will come out soon. Meanwhile, I would like to thank everyone who voted.

I intend to split the main article into a series of three sub-articles: Improving boot speed, making the system faster and lighter and window-manager specific optimisations. Due to some differences  among distributions, it is impossible to cover everything, so the distros this article will deal with are: Arch, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, SuSE and Ubuntu. Since most other distributions are either based on one of these, or are completely different, this should be enough for the great majority of users. If you have a request for a different distribution just post a comment and I’ll look into it.

For the first serious post of 2009 I’m thinking of creating an in-depth analysis on how to speed up a Linux distro. It will cover everything, from the easiest to the hardest tasks. It should be useful to anyone, from a  netbook owner to the poweruser who seeks to get the best out of his computer. However this is a very difficult task and it will require significant time to complete, so I need to know your opinion. Please add your vote to the poll below.

Dear readers

As you may have noticed, I stopped updating this blog some time ago. This was due to personal and family issues.

Things have now changed. I am ready to continue posting in this blog, though, less often than I’d like to. I would like to thank all those people who commented on my posts and remind you that hateful, abusive, offensive and insulting comments will not be approved. I intend to keep the quality of this blog as high as possible.

Till next time,
Keep drinking coffee

To my surprise, it seems that the articles became rather popular (just google “Linux4Coffee”). I want to thank all users who commented on my blog, even if some comments were too offensive to be published. I approved all negative comments unless there were inappropriate words and/or expressions.

If you googled “Linux4Coffee”, you have probably seen that many people accuse me of “Ubuntu fanboyism”. I made this post to deny this accusation. My post “7 reasons why Ubuntu is so successful” was obviously neither propagandizing Ubuntu, nor blaming other distributions. I just highlighted the reasons why, in my opinion, Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution and we all know this is an undeniable a fact.

I am not the one to blame if Ubuntu is the most successful distribution… If you read my article and you still believe that none of the reasons I mention there is good enough to make it so, then post a comment and say your opinion! Accusations of “fanboyism” without providing any counter-argument make you a fanboy, since only fanboys, accuse without any sort of logical argument to support their opinion.

One last thing: Please don’t use @linux4coffee etc as your email address/name in comments, I will be forced to reject it.

Till next time,
Keep drinking coffee

Most people like it, many others don’t, the fact is that Ubuntu is the king of Linux distributions right now – and for some very good reasons. Below I will attempt to identify those reasons that made Ubuntu the most popular distribution and explain why its success was “inevitable”.

1) A good start: Ubuntu started with a strong background. It wasn’t “yet another” distribution, it was a distribution that had a vision and enough people and money behind it to support that vision.

2) Easy and straightforward installation: From the text-based installer of the first few versions, to the point&click installer of today, ubuntu always had a very straightforward and simple installation. Every step of the installer was explained in a short, yet clear manner that made it easy for everyone to follow the steps of the installation proccedure (almost) regardless of their experience with computers.

3) ShipIt: Sharing “official” CD’s with the Ubuntu logo increased the trust of users towards the distribution and made it much easier for users on slow connections to try it. People could now give away several CD’s to their friends and coworkers which made the general adoption of Linux much faster.

4) Synaptic: If you ask a first-time Ubuntu user to tell you what impressed them most, chances are that the answer will be “synaptic”. Indeed, this application brought APT much closer to the average user and made program installation in Linux a lot easier. Users didn’t have to search for RPMs or worry that they might needed to deal with dependancies, compile from source etc, synaptic solved everything using a very simple interface. When the first versions of Ubuntu came out, the only thing that could be compared to the flexibility and ease of use of APT and Synaptic was Fedora’s YUM, but unfortunately at that time Fedora didn’t have a good front-end for YUM (although Synaptic could be used with YUM, it was not nearly as easy to set up as synaptic and Ubuntu were).

5) Ubuntu forums/Community: The Ubuntu community was, and still is one of the most important factors that promote the growth of Ubuntu. The forums are very active and old users are very friendly and patient towards newcomers. Maybe it has to do with the philosophy of “Ubuntu”…

6) User promotion: Ubuntu is based heavily on the promotion it receives from it’s users. Nearly every person who uses Ubuntu today has beed advised to try it by someone else who had tried it before them and so on. This, combined with the strong influence of Ubuntu to the internet forums related to GNU/Linux, has led to a major increase in it’s adoption .

7) Fragmented competitors: When Ubuntu started it’s “march to glory” there were three “big” distributions, SuSE, Mandriva, and Fedora. Debian and Slackware were popular but were not very appealling to newbies (Debian still had a text based installer…). All of the “big three” were not at their best when Ubuntu came out and started gathering users. SuSE had recently been bought by Novell and was still undergoing internal reconstructions, Mandriva has in the middle of a severe financial crisis, and Fedora was just at FC2 which wasn’t nearly as easy as it now is. This “fragmentation” (or “decay of the distribution maket” if you like) helped many users make the decision to switch to Ubuntu.

There are definately many other reasons why Ubuntu managed to get to the top, and stay there, but making a complete analysis is not within the purposes of this post. Highlighting some of the points that made Ubuntu what it is today, is.

Till next time, keep drinking coffee

LINKS:
Ubuntu | ShipIt | Synaptic | Wikipedia Article – Synaptic | Wikipedia Article – APT | Wikipedia Article – RPM | Ubuntu Forums | Fedora | OpenSuSE | Mandriva | Debian | Slackware | Wikipedia Article – Linux Distribution |