Or, most accurately, LINUXISNOTUBUNTUKTHNX

I believe Adam King spells it “Ubuntu =!Linux.” The lad has awesome mathematical powers.

Of course, it should really be “Ubuntu !== Linux.” I’ve never seen this formulation, which leads me to believe that none of the Loons can even program in PHP, despite their protestations to the contrary.

@DrLoser, actually the != is the more common not equals operator in most languages. However, yes, PHP and its need for triple checking type is always a source of unintentional comedy.

Regardless, when Ubuntu represents your most popular distro and largest subsection of your market, it becomes the defacto ambassador to Linux.

I shudder to think of the Ubuntu fanbase as an indicator of what to expect in a (fantasy) world of widespread Linux use.

Of course, some of the Linux crowd don’t seem to want anything even remotely mainstream:

http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs32/i/2008/219/a/2/Ubuntu___Debian_by_2TheRevolution.jpg

Hah, fragmentation within the same distro base.

NoWhereMan is right that nobody really cares whether Ubuntu is indicative of what Linux “really is”. It’s obviously doing something right to have garnered the usage and interest it has.

This obviously pisses off the non-conformist freetards. They’re like hipsters who start hating a band after someone else starts listening to them. Its only a matter of time before one of them utters:

“I was using Slack/Arch/Linux back before it was cool”.

@Administrator

To be honest, I’m a bit puzzled about what exactly Ubuntu did that was so revolutionary. Even distrowatch is vague about Ubuntu’s “stunning success” and attributes it to “better documentation” and “learning from the mistakes of previous distros”.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying Ubuntu is better or worse than DistroX. I just fail to see how Ubuntu was so amazing compared to what was done before. I suspect Ubuntu’s success is more attributable to a huge helping of outrageous hype and the purdy CDs from Shipit.

And yeah, bashing other OSes is part and parcel of the Linux crowd. Even their own distros are not safe from it.

@Administrator

I hate to be picky, but in this case you want (non)equivalence, not (non)equality. The proposition is that not all Linuxes are Ubuntu; not that Ubuntu is(not)a Linux.

True, very few other languages have the !==. It’s about the only thing in PHP I think is a good idea…

@Delano, the thing they’re doing right is marketting. Couple that with the fact that they at least claim to be trying to make desktop Linux easier to use/install/configure.

To newcomers, this impression is a lot friendlier, even if parts of it aren’t true.

@Administrator

Right. Pressing “professional”-looking CDs via Shipit (which has been dunked now), Shuttleworth giving hippie lectures on the virtues of open source and convincing millions that it’s the easiest and friendliest Linux evar.

Ironically, a distro that’s becoming very popular is Mint. It’s Ubuntu with proprietary add-ons and a “non-human” theme. I guess Shuttleworth’s speeches aren’t really all that persuasive.

Whats funny to me is that I a windows/dos “guru” who deals with linux only when I have to or for very specific uses(like a computer for homework, let a kid try and install games or malware on linux…nothing runs on linux lol)

I find Vector linux(slack based) to be FAR better then ubuntu ever was, it runs better on lesser hardware, it has less issues “out of the box”(due to not having every bloated peice of crap software they can think of bundled with the default install)

Oh yeah, and the community is small but helpful and admits that vector/linux is not perfect, infact they told me on one system that windows would be the best option due to the age of the system(old as hell, no hardware drivers for video chip, just vesa..lol)

honestly, ubuntu is just YUCK.

if you want a noob friendly linux I hate to say it, but xandros,manderva(sp) or similar non-free(see evil) distro’s are really more noob friendly.