Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Why I like Ubuntu

A few people have called me an Ubuntu Fan-Boy. I could be guilty, but not necessarily. I'm not as much an Ubuntu Fan as that I understand Mark Shuttleworth's vision for Ubuntu Linux.

Ubuntu has shot up above Fedora/Red Hat, SuSE, Mandriva, and other Linux distributions. Not just because it works on almost everything. Not just because it's free -most of the other distro's are free too. Not just because of the community behind it -Gentoo's community is just as strong. It has shot to the top because it has a figurehead.

Business, even if they're community driven, need a figurehead. Someone everyone looks up to. Respects. Fedora, SuSE, Mandriva, and all the others are either corporate, or community driven entirely. They're no real unifying vision.

Mark Shuttleworth brings unity to the vision of Ubuntu. That, and a strong business plan based on Open Source community involvement. Shuttleworth proved using open source to create a business is a viable idea. He did it with Thawte. Shuttleworth and others involve with Canonical know their stuff, and are really working to make it happen. THIS is why I'm an Ubuntu fan.

I guess you could say, I'm a fan of an idea. A business model. And, a strong potential. I guess, if anything, I'm trying to position myself with what I speculate to be a potentially highly successful business. I hope to be closely associated with it in the future.

Red Hat dropped the ball with Fedora. They're trying to pick it back up, but they're going to have a tough row ahead. The steam that Ubuntu has gained will push it ahead of even Mac OS X by the end of 2008. Things are happening fast.

But, not for Vista.

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