So far I've been using Ubuntu as my laptop's system for two months, did a lot of things with it, including serious applications development.

For doing it so, I performed several package installations and system configurations, including very low-level scripting and server-oriented configurations.



Considering everything I did, this are some things I find very useful in Ubuntu:
  • Package management system, this is perhaps its most obvious feature, it's really simple to install any package present in a repository.
  • User experience, this is also something very well worked. The system is built to make user's life as simple as possible,
  • Boot speed, it makes the difference.
  • Security updates, very robust updates that don't break anything.
  • Software center, a huge amount of software applications available for simple click-installations.
  • Huge community, it's perhaps the biggest Linux community I've ever seen.
But, it has some things that can get potential users away of it:
  • Dependency hell, do you mean I have to install the entire open-jdk stack if I want to install Maven? even if I already have sun-jdk installed?
  • User constraints, if you touch some system configurations that Ubuntu is keeping track of, you are going to have problems.
  • Configuration complexity, Slackware is a heaven compared to this.
  • Imposition, once you update the distribution, you will get your beloved desktop replaced by an awful Unity desktop.
  • Unofficial packages, I had very rough moments try to install something Ubuntu doesn't support, I ended up compiling all the custom software I required.