Re: [gentoo-user] Re: can one tell me: gentoo vs opensuse

[James Broadhead <jamesbroadhead@gmail.com>]

On 7 December 2011 15:58, Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2011-12-07, Stroller <stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> On 6 December 2011, at 23:25, Grant Edwards wrote:
>>> ...
>>> The Ubuntu documentation seems to be mainly user-forum threads full of
>>> wrong answers posted by people who didn't understand the question.
>>
>> I tried Ubuntu, hated this *so* much.
>>
>> I'm sure all the respondents were just trying to be helpful, but they
>> made Ubuntu look like the distro of idiots.
>
> Ubuntu is intended to be usable by people ignorant of how Linux/Unix
> works.  As such, it does tend to get used by people who are ignorant
> of how Linux/Unix works.  Asking such a group for technical help is an
> express-train to frustration -- but there doesn't really seem to be
> anywhere you can ask questions of Ubuntu users who _do_ understand
> things.

This actually expresses it quite well - because they dropped the
barrier to entry, they end up with a much wider audience, but one
which doesn't obsess over learning how their system operates as much
as other distros.

Additionally, Ubuntu suffers from the devs attempts to include the
newest versions of packages as stable before the majority of distros
think that they are ready[1], while trying to maintain wide 'it just
works' compatibility. They also tend towards over-engineering around
problems in linux / apt, rather than solving the root problem, or
relying on their users to adapt or deal with it themselves.[2]
Especially in the past, they have allowed their political views on
Open Source / Free Software to interfere with the best user
experience[3].

[1] Pulseaudio, KDE4 (others, I'm sure)
[2] The grub2 config process in Ubuntu is torturous, and includes
editing a file in /etc/defaults of all things.
[3] The whole concept of 'restricted extras' is detrimental to distro
usability, as is having a separate package-manager-frontend for
installing them, as is a separate repository which is disabled by
default.