Last week, I bought a new PC, with an AMD64 CPU, which was (and is) to be my main work PC, when I start working at home full time next month. Of course, it was going to have Linux - Windows, to me, simply isn’t usable as a non-gaming OS: in order to be user-friendly for newbies, power users are sacrificed. I simply don’t understand how people can work without multiple, instantly switching desktops, decent copy & paste, and a decent command line. But I digress, that’s not the point here.
Now, I started with Slackware many eons ago, then switched to Red Hat (at version 3.0.3) and, two years ago, I moved to a company where SUSE was the default distro (it’s the company I’ll be leaving at the end of August). I liked SUSE a lot, and still do. And I got quite used to it.
But I’ve been hearing so many good things about Ubuntu that I decided to try it. I chose Kubuntu, as I prefer KDE, and installed it.
Well… I wasn’t impressed. Sure, I only used it for a couple of days, but it didn’t “feel” right, for several reasons:
- when installing, it tried to download updates before asking for a proxy server. At home, my PCs have to use one, so the download failed, and, worse, it marked all update servers as down. I had to re-add them manually, because it thought it had no servers to update from.
- by default, the list of update servers is very sparse; you need to add several ones to make it useful.
- ugly, ugly fonts in KDE.
- in the AMD64 version, no Java, and no Flash.
So, after a week, I moved to SUSE 10.1, and I’m quite happier. Fonts look great, I have Java and Flash in a 64-bit Firefox, KDE isn’t “crippled” by default, it asked for the proxy server before attempting to update, and so on.
Now, I’m not saying I know something nobody else does. It’s quite possible that Ubuntu is much better, that those problems are easily fixable and I just didn’t look in the correct place, or do things “the Ubuntu way”, and so on. If that is so, I’d really like you guys to tell me why you prefer Ubuntu. 
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First, let me start by saying I am infact a Suse user, and I adore it. However, your post is pretty far off base. Ubuntu is much more advanced then the poor kubuntu distro. Ubunutu has always been thier man focus. Secondly, Suse does not give you 64bit firefox on the amd64. It defaults to the 32bit version so you can have flash and java. I do agree though, that if you want KDE SUSE or gentoo are the way to go. Although, gnome is poised to muscles kde out of the suse limelight considering they actaully have a few gnome engineers on board now, specifically coding for suse and gnome intergration.
Ubuntu is a fantastic distro, and more importantly it is bringing linux out into the media. My hope is that this will bring on mass user adoption and with that more standarization between package managemnt on the different distros.
Jeff: thanks for the reply. However, as far as I know, Ubuntu and Kubuntu aren’t that different, except for the fact that one uses Gnome (which I dislike) and the other uses KDE. I know that Ubuntu is the “original” version, and therefore more polished, but I haven’t seen anyone saying that Kubuntu is only an afterthought and that Ubuntu is completely different (in other ways than the default desktop). And SUSE’s KDE is light years ahead of Kubuntu’s.
However, I’m not so conceited that I believe that I’m probably right and everyone else is wrong.
Everyone talks about how Ubuntu is the best thing since sliced bread, bringing Linux to the masses, and all that… but nobody ever says why. Therefore, if you please… why?
Oh, and you were right about Firefox. The “About” dialog box said “x86_64″, so I thought it was the 64 bit version, but a “
file /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin” reveals it to be 32 bit.SUSE is no doubt a gr8 distro. However, Kubuntu is gr8 too. The Dapper Drake release of Kubuntu, is not bad at all. It has a polished appearance, and is easy to update and maintain. The cripple of konqueror can be easily removed. Visit: http://www.kubuntu.com/faq.php#konqueror
I find Adept to be easier than SUSE’s Yast. Also, SUSE is heavily bloated with 6 CDs of softwares, many of them not used by me. With Kubuntu, I get a system which has just those softwares which I need.
If you do prefer SUSE, go ahead and use it. After all, everything is based on Linux kernel and KDE/GNOME.
I use OpenSuse 10.1 and considering moving to kubuntu in the next month, first because i received this beautiful 20 cd’s package 10 ubuntu 10 kubuntu totally free. second because updating in Suse never work, i use apt 4 suse because i fell yast package management may be suitable for newbies, however it needs some improvement on user friendliness because apt rules.
I have Kubuntu Edgy ( 6.10 ) and I think it is extremly polished and reliable distribution.
It has almost all the requisit software I need, with a default install.
Let me elaborate:
1) It has Openoffice 2.04, Firefox 2.0, gimp, gtkam.
2) Upstart- the new init replacement, makes boot very fast.
3) The default desktop theme is to my taste.
4) adept is great as package manager.
5) My wireless card was automatically configured and I was connected
to internet just by doing a login to KDE. Otherwise networkmanager
is equally dependable.
6)It uses libqt4-core with a support for libqt3, so I can actually install the beta version of KDE 4.0
7) Here comes the best part about Kubuntu –> It community. Even a guy
like me posts reply, why becoz I get so instant replies that I feel I
am obleiged to post reply for questions whose answer I know.
I think that the best linux distros are the ones you feel are the best. If you like Ubuntu, it’s probably suited for you. I’ve worked with Ubuntu and Suse and they are both great. It just depends on what you use em for
After 3 weeks using Ubuntu 7.04 I think I’ll go back to suse 10.2! Ubuntu is a great distro I agree! but on my laptop Asus A2H the Suse is just working better…
I feel that suse is the best for me
That’s all.
Strangely enough, nowadays (which is about 10 months after my initial post), I prefer Ubuntu for servers (you really can’t beat apt-get), but as a desktop, I’m really more used to Suse, so I keep using it. An initial Ubuntu installation would simply take too long to configure “as I like it.”
It’s a matter of personal taste, of course.
By no means am I an expert with Linux. As a newbie to Linux I started with Ubuntu because all of the great things I heard about it. I used it, and being new had a lot to learn about how linux worked. I’m better now still no expert but over the past few months I used Ubuntu then uninstalled, played with Knoppix some, then Kubuntu then openSuse. For my tastes I prefer openSuse over Ubuntu. I had less problems getting things configured with openSuse on my older computer. Ubuntu wouldn’t let me install certain programs very easily. OpenSuse works great for me and btw I’m using Gnome on it vs. KDE, I like the Gnome GUI better.
Well, it’s me again.
Suse is really working better on my laptop. But, on my Desktop I find that ubuntu is doing a lot of marvelous things. From the box it does: recognize my WiFi card, my TV tuner, my Nvidia VGA… Working faster than winXP or Suse 10.2 and still stable after 5 months of experiments and hard work. You can do everything on it. Sure, Gnome of Ubuntu is a bit hard to use, but you can get used to it!
KDE is more like windows interface so windows people will like it more but on the other hand, it has a lot of programs and options that you may never use.
I donùt know why I have the impression that the opensuse program is like a testing OS for free while ubuntu is a real Linux OS to use. Suse is getting slower in time and you may face a lot of crashes (KDE fault)…
My first experience was with ubuntu 7.04 and my now distribution is ubuntu 7.10 and believe me, there are a lot of improvements.