A "short" rant about UBUNTU
Before we begin we have to make really clear that we actually LIKE ubuntu linux and it is now running on two of the four linux machines we have here (the others run SuSE), it works well and is very stable. As unix-like operating systems go, Ubuntu provides an excellent amount of user-friendly hand holding to guide you through all the stages you need to get it up and running.
This is part of the problem.
Installing software on most linux distros is never a truly simple matter - normally you have to either log in as root, or su all your commands. You often have to mess about with arcane command line arguments (tar -xcvf... etc) and then you will probably have to manually configure the install and make scripts. I am sure, at this point, you are nodding your head thinking "yep, all in a days work for a linux convert - this is what we changed over for!" And, largely we agree with you.
Ubuntu, however, seems to make this process incredibly complicated (even more than it already is). Going from the hand holding fight to get the "repository" to let you install anything of worth to command line installs leads the way to madness. Last week, here at Sci-Tech we tried to install Macromedia (or is it Adobe now?) ColdFusion server for Linux and apache 2.0 on one of the Ubuntu machines.
Six hours, and numerous error messages later we gave up completely.
Now before we blame Ubuntu entirely for this, we haven't tried this on the SuSE machines so this could simply be an "issue" with CF7 and Linux. After the Ubuntu debacle we resorted to the "trusty" Windows 2003 server which installed CF7 so easily it would make your eyes water.
Ubuntu generated a list of errors longer than you can imagine. There were problems with folder permissions - using the file manager as root is harder than you think and you end up resorting to command line mv and cp commands (not hard but tedious) - but these were solvable. Once everything was in the correct place, apache was all sorted out (easier said than done in Ubuntu) you would think ColdFusion would be a doddle to install. Nope.
Sadly, ColdFusion 7 is actually incredibly easy to install on Windows machines, and there probably is room for debate on how much technical knowledge a user could be expected to have when it comes to installing a major server system like this. We agree. We are not "linux newbies" and this was more complicated than we wanted to deal with. Ubuntu is marketing itself as a "mainstream" version of Linux - and if you took its install routine as an example it would be very, very sucessfull at this - however before this can happen it needs to actually be properly user friendly.
On a side note, you may have realised we are BIG fans of FreeCIV here at Sci-Tech. It runs really well (and easily) on SuSE. We did try to download and install it on Ububtu but guess what.......... Yep. Thank the penguin for SuSE.
Please Note:
Despite all this, we are happy with Ubuntu. It is a good linux distribution and by far the best Debian based package.
