Bristol Wireless Wiki

Ubuntu is often hailed as the future for the GNU/Linux desktop and even for the server. This page is dedicated to exploring the downsides to Ubuntu.

No established release policy

Once concerned with a production-ready release every 6 months, Ubuntu have now decided that some releases will be "LTS" - long term supported. It's hard to depend on a distribution with no set release policy.

You don't get the whole of Debian

Whilst the core packages are supported, this is only a few hundred of the 20,000 available in the Debian repositories. The rest are not guaranteed to work and indeed many don't.

Jumping the gun

You get a very hot off the press Gnome and Evolution suite with Ubuntu, even in the LTS version. There are bugs that don't get fixed on the first Gnome and Evolution major releases. You know the score, 2.00 some bugs, 2.01 getting better, 2.02 finally fixed. But with Ubuntu you get the 2.00 release for its cutting edge package. These don't get fixed up even in the LTS releases.

Easy installer or working installer

The installer for Ubuntu is in a state that most projects would consider experimental. Your mileage may vary.

Lack of Multimedia

So, you may be lumbered non-free stuff you don't want, but when it comes to getting multimedia codecs (including those openly licensed but patent encumbered in some countries), Ubuntu is not so well supported as Debian. The repositories at http://debian-multimedia.org are a one stop shop for Debian multimedia, but don't support Ubuntu.

ADD TO IT

Please add to this page with anything else you can think of, or specific examples of problems.

I'm using Kubuntu now and quite like it, had everything up and running just the way I like it quite quickly. I can see the technical and political issues with Canonical's software but they're hardly Red Hat or Novell though are they (yet, I suppose), and they're a very good introduction for non-techies who want to have a go with their own install.

Please allow me to add some more information about some of these points

No established release policy
- Ubuntu releases every 6 months. Every 2 years the release is an LTS, with the next LTS being released in April 2008.
Lack of Multimedia
- http://www.medibuntu.org/ provides the same service for Ubuntu as debian-multimedia does for Debian.