Why is Ubuntu not Linux and Mint is?

[iambibhas]

I came across this blog post where the author suggests that if someone wants to start using Linux, s/he should go for Linux Mint, and not Ubuntu. Because Ubuntu is not Linux. Ok. I hear that a lot. But I want to know exactly why it isn't and why Mint is. Need a good explanation.

[simonh]

Ubuntu is Linux because it uses the Linux kernel. Linux is a kernel, not an operating system.

Ubuntu is an operating system. Linux Mint is an operating system. Fedora is an operating system. The fact that we call them distros, as though they were really all the same thing, is a collective delusion that has made the fragmentation of the 'Linux community' seem like a strength when in reality it is also a severe, pernicious and chronic weakness.

Note my use of the term 'also'. That fragmentation has allowed a thousand flowers to bloom, but it also means anyone wanting to support 'Linux' has 1000 very slightly different and subtly incompatible targets to hit. This is what allowed Apple to establish a stable and lucrative unix based desktop business back in the late 90s/early 2000s, at the height of the 'Year of the Linux Desktop' era.

I think Canonical finally realised this a few years ago. They recognised that staying with the pack would mean staying a 'me too' distro. I can only imagine what has been going through Mark Shuttleworth's mind while Apple walked away with the unix desktop market over the last, what, 15 years? I think he finally figured out why they were able to do that, and doing everything the same way as everyone else wasn't it.

[iambibhas]

I know Linux is a kernel. But the thing is, on the article "What is Linux" at linux.org[1], it says, "Linux is an operating system that evolved from a kernel created by Linus Torvalds when he was a student at the University of Helsinki. ... To say that Linux is an operating system means that it's meant to be used as an alternative to other operating systems, Windows, Mac OS, MS-DOS, Solaris and others."

How does this fit into things?

[1]: http://www.linux.org/article/view/what-is-linux

[simonh]

I'm only posting my opinion, and it's my opinion that they are wrong and pretending that all these Linux distros are the same operating system is an extremely harmful mistake. I know that opinion is not mainstream.

[metacontent]

Apple established a lucrative unix based desktop by giving it away for free with cool looking hardware, but only after they made it big with the iphone.

If it wasn't for the iphone Apples "unix based desktop" would still be a blip, and probably a smaller blip than Ubuntu.

[simonh]

Apple was already the most profitable PC manufacturer when the iPhone launched. All the other PC manufacturers know how to make hardware and could up their game to match Apple if they wanted to. The one thing they can't compete on is the OS and software.

Ask actual Mac users why they use Macs and I think you'll find the main reason is the OS and applications that run on it. For me it's things like Time Machine, iPhoto and iMovie and back when I switched in 2007, the lack of viruses. In my opinion, and that of enough other people to matter, there are no good replacements for those on Windows.

[tobylane]

OS X was out for a whole decade before the iPhone. I can't measure a blip, but I expect Apple were passed that within a year, eg the bondi blue iMac.

[sp332]

Well technically, it is. So any explanation is going to be fuzzy and non-technical. I think the reasoning is that Ubuntu uses less-popular packages by default. So if you learn how to do something on Ubuntu, that probably doesn't tell you how to to it on any other distro of Linux. So if you want to learn "Linux" it might be more productive to learn on a distro that uses more... normal packages, like Mint.

[DanBC]

Ubuntu is suffering from a couple of things at the moment.

1) It's very popular, and thus there is some kneejerk backlash. "This band was cool before all of you knew them, and now they're awful".

2) Some genuine concern from calm and knowledgeable people about some things Ubuntu is doing - some ignoring of the userbase; some coding not going upstream or too much going upstream etc.

[lbcadden3]

Link to the blog post?

Other than the default packages Ubuntu works very much like Debian to me.

As far as Ubuntu vs Mint its more like Windows 7 vs 8 for me, Ubuntu being 8. I mean with a different interface than most are used to.

[munimkazia]

Well, the blog author is entitled to his opinion, as is everybody else. I don't see why Ubuntu isn't linux as it uses the linux kernel. It doesn't get simpler than that.

[codemonkeymike]

Ubuntu has links to non-free-opensource software/company which gains the ire of people like Linus and the community around him.