Nuke my Gentoo, Fedora for Ubuntu?

[Jeff Waugh]

<quote who="Andreas Geske">

> - How fast is Ubuntu compared to SuSE or Fedora. Mentioned distros are
> extremely slow on my PC (Athlon XP 1800+, 256 MB RAM). I know it's hard to
> measure, but maybe you can give me your personal "feeling" about the speed
> of Ubuntu Linux

It seems to have a reasonable placebo effect, but there really isn't much to
compare between the major distros. For GNOME or KDE, you should probably get
a bit more RAM.

> - I'm one of these "bleeding edge guys". I want to have major version of
> software (e.g. Firefox 1.0) ASAP, that means 2 weeks after release.
> Ubuntu is based on Debian, which is not known as a "speed wonder".

We ship our preview release on the day GNOME is shipped. We do not update
software on our stable release. So, the maximum you'll have to wait for
tested and supported versions of the software you use is six months. You can
always help us test our development branch, though.

> - I don't like to search for third party packages throughout the whole 
> web. Does Ubuntu Linux provide a reasonable software repository without 
> having to edit yum.conf or other files where to pick up my packages. 
> Maybe there's a list of packages supported out of the box.

Ubuntu includes a huge amount of supported software, but also provides all
the packages that build from Debian in our universe and multiverse repos.
Our goal is to remove the need for alternate repositories.

> - Even Ubuntu Linux is Gnome based distro there are two KDE apps I won't 
> miss: K3B and Krename. Are these apps available? (Note: I don't need a 
> fully featured KDE desktop, just these 2 apps)

They're not supported, but they are available in universe.

> - Can I use Ubuntu Linux as a server? Not for production use, just for 
> private testing purposes. In other words: Does Ubuntu Linux provide 
> packages for latest versions of: MySQL, PostgreSQL, qmail+additional 
> packages, Python, Perl+additional packages, PHP, apache2?

Yes, Ubuntu is a fully supported server system. If the software you need is
not supported, it's always available in universe anyway.

> - Due to Ubuntu being a Debian based distro, I assume the package format 
> is DEB. Is there a graphical tool for installing software, like 
> synaptic? (or even better)

We ship synaptic. There will be even better tools in our next release.

> - Does Ubuntu Linux provide goodies like
>      - automatic hardware detection
>      - autmounting CD-ROMs, digicams etc. (I love it to plug in my
>        digicam and use it *without* having to mount it manually)

Yes.

>      - graphical configuration of the most important system settings
>        like network, X11, printer, mount points, boot options etc.

Mostly, but in particular, there is no X11 configuration tool yet.

- Jeff

-- 
Ubuntu in Mataró, Spain: December 5th-18th      http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
 
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