 Hey everybody, welcome back to the channel. Today we're going to be talking about Ubuntu. So if you've followed the channel for a while or listened to any of the podcasts that I'm on, you pretty much know that I have a, to put it kindly, I have a love-hate relationship with Ubuntu and Canonical. I have a lot of problems with the Snap store and the Snap craft and all that kind of stuff, some of it being because some parts of Snap are closed source and it's really weird and I just don't agree with that kind of thing. But I love Ubuntu because it really does bring Linux to the new user. It's by far the most popular Linux desktop distribution out there and for good reason. And there's another good reason why a lot of Ubuntu distros are based on Ubuntu because it's really good. It's stable, it's complete, it basically is one of the easiest ones to install. If you can put an ISO on a USB key or thumb drive, you can install Ubuntu. I mean, that's literally the hardest part usually. Obviously UEFI can complicate things but even that has gotten way more accessible to new users than it was say even three years ago when I joined the Linux community. So today I just wanna talk a little bit about the Ubuntu community because really the thing that makes Ubuntu the gem that it is, is that the community surrounding Ubuntu is just fantastic. So let's just jump here to the main screen and you can see some of the things that I'm talking about. So this here is of Ask Ubuntu. And this is where you can come and get questions answered. And you're probably asking, well, Matt, don't all the Linux distributions have forums or whatever? And like, yeah, sure, that's true. This right here is the Arch forums. And if you go into the Arch forums, they're notorious for pointing towards the Arch wiki, which is this right here. Everybody's heard read the fucking manual, that's what usually you get on the Arch forums. Unless you've gone to the wiki, found no solution, then you can go to the forums and usually just help. Now they're not all like that. Obviously, you can find nice people who will point you towards simple solutions to simple problems. But it's completely different on Ask Ubuntu. You can get on here and ask simple questions that you might not know and somebody will get on there and they'll answer it usually very politely. And that's something that you don't get with a lot of Linux distros. They also have tons of IRC channels that you can get onto that are really good. I talked about IRC in the last video. I also, they also have Telegram and Discord channels. And you also, one of the great things about it is that their lead developers for the desktop are probably more accessible than any other Linux distro, especially at this size. So if you want to get in contact with an Arch Linux developer, I don't even know how to go about that. I use Arco and I've talked to the developer before. He's not, you know, I wouldn't put him in the realm of someone like Wimpy or Popey in terms of, you know, accessibility, mainly because he's, you know, just as busy as they are. And he's doing some, as you can tell, he's trying to be nice. He can be kind of prickly because he's an Arch Linux user. I mean, as an Arch Linux user, you tend to be prickly. Anyway, but the developers for Ubuntu, you ask them questions and you can get on, you know, just the other day I got on Wimpy's Discord server and asked a question about his podcast setup and he answered. I mean, it was just simple. I mean, yeah, it took like an hour or something, but yeah, he answered. It was awesome. It was a simple answer. And it was something that I could have found on my own. He has had a link to the answer to my question on his website. I could have went and found that. He didn't say, well, I have this link on the thing. Go look for the link. No, he was just very nice and answered the question. And there's just tons and tons of examples about this. So when you're a new Linux user, the chances are you're going to have a lot of questions because Linux is different than Windows. It's not the same. It looks different. It functions different. There's a lot of things that you have to do that in different ways, especially surrounding software. You have to find alternatives to software. You have to learn those alternatives. Like GIMP, if you're moving from Photoshop or Cayden Live, if you're trying to do video editing. And those are things that you may not be able to success. I mean, if you look at the Cayden Live documentation, I'm not sure if this is still true, but it used to be really, really old looking and out of date. I'm sure it's probably better now. But a lot of the KDE stuff has documentation that looks like it was created for KDE4. It just does. And if you have questions, you have to go get them answered. And the best way to do that, if you're a new Linux user and you're using Ubuntu, is through either Ask Ubuntu or the Ubuntu discourse, which is what this is here. And this is basically the forum for Ubuntu. And it's very comprehensive. And most times here, you'll find that people are very friendly and able to answer your questions. Most of this stuff on the discourse is for more developer-focused stuff. So if you have regular questions, you would probably focus these on Ask Ubuntu, because that's where more new users kind of go to ask their questions. Something like this guy here, he can't move the Linux Wi-Fi driver to a specific directory. I'm not sure why he'd want to do that. Where, what is the PPA for the Firefox developer edition? That'd be something that somebody would be able to answer. And I mean, these are just regular, everyday questions. I mean, some of them are more technical than something that would, I guess, look at this guy. This guy's looking for help for a homework assignment. And nobody's telling him like, ah, we don't want to help, do your own damn homework. This guy here, can you just please add a sample of your work so far? Or, and this person here provided a beginner's guide and pointed him towards other resources. That's, I mean, that's amazing, right? This guy's just asking for help with his homework. And it's really cool. So, I mean, there's not a lot more to say other than I think I would argue that the Ubuntu community had, that Ubuntu has the best community of any Linux distro. It's very large, I mean, very large because so many people use Ubuntu. It's also very helpful. And usually those two things don't go together. Usually the larger the community is, the less helpful the, especially the administrators tend to be because when you run a large network of help, help, you know, technical help tools, the less time you have, so you tend to be less approachable. And that's just not the case with the Ubuntu community. You can, I mean, Popey did a YouTube live stream not too long ago where he just sat there and answered questions on it, asked Ubuntu for like an hour and a half. And that's really what, you know, he does that a lot. So anyways, that was just a quick video. I really do think that the Ubuntu community is just amazing. There's not to say that the Arch community is bad, it's just they're more prickly. They're also, you know, much more prone to, being mean towards people who don't first look at the manual, phrasing that nicely, right? So it's just, it's just different. It's not as, I don't think it's quite as good. So anyways, that is this video. If you enjoyed it, give it a thumbs up. If you really enjoy this, make sure you check out our Patreon at patreon.com slash the next cast. I set up a Patreon account, I don't know why. Okay, it's just the end thing to do. Set up a Patreon account and get people to subscribe. So if you really support the channel by going to patreon.com slash the Linux cast and make sure you subscribe to the channel so you don't miss out on any FOSS related content. So we'll see you next time. Thanks for watching.