Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Scoring Update on Ubuntu and Unity

I have downloaded Ubuntu LTS and Unity and have tested them on my old and relatively new IBM computers and hardly anything to write home except 3 new introduction to Unity. They are
1. Cloud support with (Ubuntu one) 2 GiB space.
2. Clean up utility
3. New desktop (already made some comments)

Total score for LTS is 915 and for Unity 1255 (300 points for new desktop) both well below.
Linux Mint score is 1235 and difference between Unity and Mint is negligible and Mint is more robust than Unity.
The relative increase of downloads of Mint at Distrowatch may be a reflection of this lack of outstanding difference.
The difference is only cosmetic at the expense of stability.
At least if they had introduced Sinhala capability I would have given another 100 points and the lack functionality for visually handicapped (at least ORCAS) is a glaring omission.

Now you have a choice either go for Debian proper  at Debian Mint as alternative.

My prediction is Ubuntu is going to lose its fan base like what happened to Redhat when Fedora was thrust upon Linux addicts, like us.
Having said that I still support Ubuntu's innovative approach and with touch screen and tablets coming it will make a serge in the customer base.
Till then Ubuntu fans Multiboot with at least 3 Linux distributions in one box.

With hard drives going to 500 GiB and cheap now what other option one has?

Mind you both CDs did not boot with my old IBM and there was loss of font functionality.