Wikipedia Converts to Ubuntu — is Change Coming?
October 10 2008 / by John Heylin
Category: Technology Year: 2008 Rating: 5 Hot
The Wikimedia Foundation, home of Wikipedia, the 8th ranked site on the internet, is switching its servers (all 400 of them) over to an Ubuntu operating system. “Wikimedia’s move to Ubuntu is part of an effort to simplify administration of the organization’s 400 servers, which previously ran a mix of various versions of Red Hat and Fedora.” The volunteers and staff (consisting of five people) cite ease of use and simplicity of server migration making everything “a million times easier.”
So what is the appeal of Ubuntu?
For starters, it’s free. Anyone staring at a Mac or Windows Operating System at your local tech-mart knows that to get a good operating system you may have to shell out as much as $200.
Secondly, Ubuntu is open-source. Although many are still confused or wary of open-source software, we’re seeing an explosion of it in the last few years. Firefox, a popular open-source web browser, has gone from 3% of the global market in 2005 to almost 20% today with over 500 million downloads. There’s just something about open-source software that appeals to many people — the idea that you’re using something from a community and not a corporation.
So what does this mean in the long run? Although Ubuntu may take a while to get used to, we will see it gracing the desktops of users more and more in the next five years. If it really takes off, Microsoft may find itself a company that builds applications instead of operating systems. Even Apple is expecting some heated competition for its iPhone operating system with the release of the Linux-based Google Android mobile phone software.
So while I stand here heralding the end of Microsoft and Apple as an operating system (the end is nigh!), reality is that Linux scares people to death. If you run Windows, everything is compatible with it. You don’t have to worry about drivers being compatible, software not working, or parts of your computer flat out not working. It’s easy.
But despite being easy, I believe people are getting more interested in Linux. I liken it to the commercialization of the the internet and AOL. In the beginning, AOL was king. It was easy to use and simple. But as time went on, people became more experienced in operating computers and realized that AOL was actually holding them back from the full online experience with all the buttons and safety guards on AOL. It’s gotten to the point where most of the people using AOL are the elderly or techno-phobes (AOL has fallen from 27 million subscribers in 2002 to around 8 million today).
I see Ubuntu becoming the next step in the evolution of users.
I myself was scared to death of a Linux-based system. I remember seeing people using it in high school and thinking how cool they were because they weren’t chained down by their operating system. Of course, I never made the switch because the idea of fiddling around with code flashed images of my entire computer shutting down because I accidentally deleted the “do not explode” code of the software.
But after dealing with Vista for four months and their constant updates (I think at one point I was downloading an update everyday and restarting it once a week), I bit the bullet and switched to Ubuntu. I’ve been using Ubuntu for three months now and have never looked back. Do issues come up where I need to delve into the code? Sure. Is it scary? Nope. Ubuntu Forums answers just about every question I have, even laptop-specific questions.
I took a long shot and it’s paid off in spades. The question now is when are you going to switch?
Image: Gonzalo Valenzuela (Flickr, CC-Attribution)
Comment Thread (4 Responses)
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I can totally understand the reasoning of using open-source software. I have dealt with Windows for way too long, only to be pushed into converting over to the Mac. There have been times when I would contemplate using Linux and I have heard some good things about it, but it’s still a daunting task to make a switch into something that you’re not 100% about.
Posted by: christinep October 13, 2008
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I think you missed the point.
Wikipedia switched from one family of linux (Fedora/Red Hat) to another linux distribution (Ubuntu).
They are both free as in beer, they are both free as in freedom (open source). This doesn’t really have any implications in terms of proprietary versus free software, only that Ubuntu has increased appeal over Fedora in terms of Wikipedia’s administration purposes.
That’s not to say that I’m not a big Gnu/Linux fan, but your commentary is irrelevant to the news item.
Posted by: akoumjian October 14, 2008
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The driver issues you mentioned and ‘parts of your computer flat out not working’ are largely a thing of the past for a first time Ubuntu user attempting a clean, latest-release, Ubuntu install. Even the graphics company Via, who manufacture the cheap, onboard graphics chipsets that were notoriously difficult to get to function fully in any Linux distro, not just Ubuntu, have changed their tune and chosen to work with the Open Source community, resulting in their releasing drivers for most of their chipsets for a number of ‘nix distros. I can’t see the old ‘Microsoft control all the drivers so Linux will always be second rate’ carrying much weight anywhere these days.
And hey, even if something isn’t working properly after a virgin install, it isn’t going to be difficult for a newb to fix. I switched to Linux 5 years ago and had no experience of the command line at all. I was a 10 years plus, point and click, know nothing Windows user. I also had a cheap laptop that had Via onboard graphics, so, I had to edit my sources.list and add third party sources and public keys to apt, compile and install third party drivers, and edit my xorg.conf in order to get it working properly at my widescreen resolution. I had the whole laptop sorted out in one afternoon. The support out there for Ubuntu is phenomenal. I learnt more about computers in the first couple of months of running Ubuntu than I had in over 10 years of using MS products, and it was really easy to get the hang of. To successfully accomplish a clean Ubuntu install, all a user needs to know from a tech point of view is; how to read; how to write; how to search with Google; and how to cut and paste chunks of text, all of which are daily (almost for the cut and paste) Windows user exercises. And don’t forget, a clean Ubuntu install takes nowhere near as long as the nightmare that is a clean XP install (I have never tried Vista), so you won’t be sat watching the slowest progress bars ever coded all day long!
Good post yeah m8, keep spreading the Open Source message!
And don’t foget folks, we may be getting somewhere with the battle against the MS/Mac OS monopolies but there are other predators lurking in the pond that is the interweb and they want total control over it! This is bad because they are huge corporations, like AT&T. They seriously have plans to completely destroy the internet as we know it.
For more information and to join in the fight to save our internet, check this out and spread the word to as many fellow surfers as you can>>>>>
http://ipower.ning.com/netneutrality2
Scary stuff eh! Google ‘net neutrality’ for even more info. These big companies want to take the web from us in 2012, that’s only a few years away now, so we don’t have much time! It is serious and would mean the end of blogs like this and all of the other cool, obscure, outrageous, or whatever has been created, web sites!
UKBlaza
Posted by: UKBlaza October 15, 2008
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@UKBlaza I completely agree, Ubuntu can be fixed, spruced up, and can run perfectly with a few minor tweaks. Honestly, I just haven’t had the time to try and get my built-in webcam or various silly buttons Dell has put on my laptop.
The reason I haven’t given up hope and gone back to Vista is because of the Ubuntu Forums. They are amazing. There’s even a discussion thread specifically for my model laptop filled with goodies and experienced help. And with Ubuntu becoming more and more popular, the pool of experienced help will increase exponentially. Just look at Firefox now or three years ago.
It’s just when you think about it, the average person does not want to fiddle with all the code that actually makes the computer run, so convincing them that it’s okay to do so and that if they follow instructions they won’t kill their computer is going to take some time, like friend-of-a-friend time.
Posted by: John Heylin October 15, 2008
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