Ubuntu and derivatives (Re: Ubuntu.com Download Page)

[Vesa Paatero]

Hi,

Thanks for you message, Volkan. I also noticed at some point that the 
Ubuntu website says surprisingly little about the variants, even the 
officially supported variants. I have an Edubuntu installation since 
2007 and I'd appreciate better information as a basis for 
decision-making between Ubuntu and Edubuntu and other variants.

It seems that there is some information about the interrelationship of 
variants (or derivatives) but it is not easy to find. Dmitrijs already 
brought up the link 
http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/derivatives and I like how 
the page

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DerivativeTeam/Derivatives

presents a classification for the variants: "Official editions", 
"Recognized flavors", "Customizations"... with a few words about what 
each class is about.

Whereas the owner(s) of Ubuntu are doing well in allowing the 
derivatives/variants to coexist peacefully with Ubuntu, it seems that 
they prefer to keep ubuntu.com the home page of exactly Ubuntu rather 
than an umbrella for the whole family of derivatives.

In theory, someone could make e.g. a wiki-styled documentation site 
about the essential differences between derivatives, such as what you 
can and what you can't install in a given derivative compared to the 
main line of development (Ubuntu), but the challenge comes from how 
swiftly these things change from release to release. And I'd guess that 
most applications can be installed to any derivative, the difference 
between derivatives being more about what is installed by default.

Vesa


25.01.2013 16:34, Volkan Gezer wrote:
> I think most people don't know that Kubuntu, Lubuntu and Xubuntu
> versions are officially supported by Ubuntu.
>
> I highly suggest you telling in download page something like that:
>
>
> "Ubuntu is using Unity desktop environment.
>
> We also have official distributions for KDE, XCFE .... environments too..."
>
> to give a link to other official Ubuntu distros. You can also add a
> page which users can reach in one click to these distributions and
> comparison.
>
> -Volkan
>