Re: Request Your Opinion

["Gustavo Franco" <stratus debian org>]

2008/3/9 Farrokh Mehrad <farrokh mehrad gmail com>:
> Hi GNOME People,
>
> I was recently introduced to UBUNTU by a friend.  I have been long
> interested to switching to LINUX and did not know how.  This was and still
> is due to perpetual threat of virus in Windows, otherwise I must admit that
> Windows Office is powerful.  However,  I bought a RED HAT book and tried to
> download the OS through a couple of CDs attached to the guide book etc, but
> failed due to one reason or another.
>
> Now with the little knowledge I have about Ubuntu, would you think it wise
> or a big jump if I switch to GNOME?
> (...)

Hi Farrokh,

If you are using Ubuntu, you are not only using a Linux distribution
but also GNOME, Debian packages (set of softwares organized "the
debian way"), GNU tools (also known as "GNU userland") and much more
pieces. To be easier to understand, GNOME is "what you see" in Ubuntu,
Linux is something you don't but it writes to your hard disk. :-)

You can replace what is on top of Linux, so what you see, and that's
why there are so many "Linux distributions", think about engines and
how many different cars you can build "around" the same engine (we
call it kernel).

There's a detail about it that I need to write, otherwise people will
shot me, but you can ignore for a start. You can replace GNOME, or use
in parallel different pieces that aims to do the same thing but in a
different way, the most used are: KDE and XFCE. There are even Linux
distributions who choose KDE as default instead of GNOME, rpm packages
and not deb packages. In the end they are all Linux (same kernel,
"engine", "core") with different stuff on top.

regards,
-- Gustavo "stratus" Franco