[NBLUG/talk] Ubuntu

[Rob Orsini]

On Nov 29, 2005, at 12:17 AM, Stephen Cilley wrote:

> I can't say in particular, but one of the things as a
> complete newbie I find myself asking over and over
> again is, what's the REAL difference between all of
> these distros.  I realize that that's probably the
> whole point of the round table, but I'm afraid I'll
> get the same answers I've been getting: too general
> and vague, stuff like, "It's great for media and it's
> really low overhead."  That's not really enough for me
> to get any kind of a real tangible understanding of
> what makes the operating system so good.
> So, in short, this is my one request: I'd like to SEE
> all of the key differences demonstrated on the screen.
>  I'd really appreciate a petting zoo after everybody
> is done speaking; it'd be cool to be able to have
> access to 10 different laptops afterward all with a
> different distro.
> Anyway, I realize that's not terribly specific.
> Sorry.
> Thank you,
> Stephen

Stephen, It's very hard to ask that question and not get  a "religious" 
answer. The other thing that clouds the issue is that all distros have 
so much in common. You may not get into the differences without having 
to do some system maintenance or installing on a extremely old computer 
(for example). So you could walk around a panel of laptops and see 
different Desktop/Windows managers and perhaps even software installed 
on some but not others, but I'm not sure you'd get a feel for each 
distro without exploring with it on your own for a while. So, what do 
you do? Listen to the ramblings of others (like Troy) and then ignore 
it and formulate your own opinion. Install them all! :)

Rob