Or perhaps I should call this post RedHat vs. Debian.  In any event, my own experiences lead me to the conclusion that Debian is the hands down winner in usability.

I know that ther are a lot of Redhat users out there that would probably tell me that their distro is more powerful, more secure and more robust overall.  They might even be right.  The problem is, I don’t want to have to be a Linux expert to use the operating system and I definitely don’t like to be forced to visit the terminal to install simple software.

Unfortunately, my recent experiences with Fedora forced me to do just that. Installing Adobe Air applications required the use of wget and admin privilege hacking for proper operation, whereas in Ubuntu all that was required was to grant the application permission to continue with what it needed to do.

I understand the opinion of the RedHat crowd in regards to security.  It makes sense to be leery of allowing applications to install files in system folders.  Unfortunately this practice is common. Requiring your users to have the experience and know-how to get around it rather than just presenting them with a dialog asking if it is acceptable is archaic, not inherently secure.

In the end, I must conclude that , at least for the moment, Debian based distributions like Ubuntu provide a better user experience in the realm of day-to-day computing.  Whether they are better at secure computing or server applications is a different question, but as for a desktop that actually has a shot at competing with Windows or Apple, Debian is the best choice out there.