Ubuntu Book by O'Reilly?

Vincent Trouilliez vincent.trouilliez at modulonet.fr
Thu May 12 20:41:11 UTC 2005


> Ubuntu is really just a customization on top of Debian... if you dont
> think a Debian book would do well, then I dont know why an Ubuntu one
> would.  

Well Ubuntu is a lot more than Debian ! It's different anyway. To me, as
a linux newb, Ubuntu is something I feel confident using, it is clearly
targeted at "normal" people, there is money to back it up, there is a
will to serve the user, there is a will to make it a "finished" product,
there is a will to back it up.
To me, Debian is just another distro, maybe more famous and old than the
others, but that's about it. Whereas Ubuntu is something I feel will be
useful to me, now, and more importantly, in the long term, so that I can
invest time in it and stick with it over the years. Changing distro is a
major trauma, it's fun to play with at first, but in the end people
want/need stability. They just want something that work and that will
still be there in 5 years when they upgrade their machine. They don't
want to learn a new distro for the sake of it !
I feel many people feel the same, which explains the success of Ubuntu. 
So in short, I do, strongly, believe that Ubuntu is indeed, as Tom said,
"not just another distro", and that it plainly deserves it's own printed
material, just like Red Hat or Windoze or Unix.

> Additionally, with the relatively quick release cycle, it
> would be out of date rather quickly.

He could just write small "updates" to cover release specific stuff.
For example a first, comprehensive, big book on Breezy (I guess it takes
time to write a big quality book, so breezy will be released by then),
say 600 pages, then offer a cheap 30 page booklet to cover "Breezy + N "
specific stuff. And say every two years, update the main/big book.
Well, just food for thought really...



--
Vince





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