Penguin Pete told us Ubuntu is not Linux in an infamous post he later deleted. An unrelated article tells you Linux is not Windows. Anyone bad enough at math will conclude a relationship between Ubuntu and Windows and secretly that’s the real subject of both articles.

Ubuntu is all about fixing bug #1 and I feel it's incredibly successful in that game. Ubuntu gets mainstream press coverage, hardware vendor support and popularity with not-so-geeky but experienced (and potentially influential) computer users to an extend unheard of in the free software world. Before Ubuntu, the public was split in two groups concerning their notion of computers:

1. Computers do what I program them to do
2. Computers are designed to run Windows Media Player

(Yes, this is a simplification!) Now, we are dealing with a (growing) group of computer users thinking, Computer are designed to run Windows Media Player or the Linux equivalent thereof. This is a big deal, if (and only if) you are trying to fix that famous bug number one. We owe this to some degree to Shuttleworth, Canonical and Ubuntu.

You can interpret this as Ubuntu is (like / similar to) Windows or Ubuntu is not Window depending on your point of view if you're into such questions. However, this doesn't tell us whether Ubuntu is actually any good!

We find Ubuntu being used by former Windows users as well as former Linux users (read: former users of any other distro). What convinces both group is probably Ubuntu's out-of-the-box experience. Is it better than other Linux distributions, better than Windows? I doubt it. To the somewhat experienced computer user a new Ubuntu setup feels exactly like a new Windows PC or Mac: familiar and unknown at the same time; seems to work and wants to be explored.

That is how far the whole Ubuntu thing goes; beyond this point, you're on your own. If things fail, you can either

• revert to the command line (the Linux way) or
• wait for a new release, start praying or revert to Windows (the Windows way).

I may have missed something but it seems there's no Ubuntu way of doing (even simple) administrative tasks (except for upgrades). If you google for issues with Ubuntu you will very likely find a forum thread of clueless users trying to fix each others problems by guessing ("I think it worked last time.").

I think, what Ubuntu (and probably all desktop oriented distributions) is really trying to be is something between Windows and Linux. There are two obvious problem which this approach:

1. Does this implied continuum between the two world really exist?
2. From any point of view it must seem they stopped half way.

Thus, if being in between Windows and Linux is the goal, stopping half way is the cost and this requires developing the vacuum you'll find there. For Ubuntu this means:

• Developing a consistent and graphical interface to the whole system configuration (not just Gnome).
• Inventing or adopting a new language to substitute Unix terms. (Everything is no longer a file.)
• Creating a barrier between Linux (server) land and Ubuntu land. (This is what people are afraid of when they say Ubuntu is not Linux.)

The alternative is teaching Ubuntu users how to use Linux:

• If you can't use the command line, you can't use a computer. Period. (This is what people mean when they say Linux is not Windows.)
• Requires documentation!
• Requires a different marketing!

Judge yourself which one is harder.

I've been using Ubuntu Edgy exclusively for half a year and I talked a friend into dual booting. We're both back to where we came from (Debian and Windows XP). The reason were none of the above, it's much simpler: There are too many bugs! The short testing period is another huge problem of Ubuntu. A long way to go to be the perfect OS many people are believing to find with Ubuntu.

Update: In his blog Lee Archie posted a formal logic analysis of my headline. It's worth reading. However, now that I know how smart (and educated) my readers are, I think, I can no longer post illogical conclusions...