Ubuntu as a family

[Chanchao]

On Sat, 2006-05-20 at 18:06 +0000, Pupeno wrote:

> I know the original goal of Ubuntu was to be only one distro, but others have 
> appeared and some have been embraced and now it is a family and I believe the 
> concept of family works very well. Because each one is particular, yet the 
> 90% that is the same is still the same, sharing the load.
> I would propose then to use "Ubuntu" as the name of the family and change the 
> name of the Gnome distro to "Gubuntu"[1]. What do you guys think ?

I think "No."  :)

Ubuntu is Ubuntu.  Everything else is there because there was a demand
for it.  It would have made far more sense to call stuff Ubuntu-KDE or
"Ubuntu Classroom Edition" or Ubuntu-Light and so on, but because the
KDE desktop environment was the first spin-off AND because KDE people
seem to kname keverything kin kthe kworld kwith ka kk kin kfront, kthey
kobviously kopted kfor Kubuntu. 

Then everyone and their dog started calling their spin-offs *ubuntu.

I think it was a mistake to make it sound like all the alternatives are
separate distros with their own name and logo.  They're just Ubuntu with
slightly different packages selected as default, which makes for an
easier download/install I suppose.  Also these projects make sure
there's attention wihtin Ubuntu for KDE support, for Classroom/thin
client use, and all those.  So they're definitely not without merit.  

However, if I were to start my own distro because I don't like Firefox
and want Epiphany by default and called my distro Epibuntu and made a
logo and a forum and all that, then chances are people would think me a
couple of cherries short of a pie, and they'd be right. 

Cheers,
Chanchao