what is ogg?

i've had soo many people tell me that ogg is better than mp3, how? i know ogg is opensource, but as long as the bit rate's the same does it really matter in terms of quality? or does the differnce matter in size ?

I'd like to start ripping to ogg too, but nothing definitive seems to be out there?

I need a GUI and a CD>OGG ripper.. Not lossless>OGG. Any painless solutions? This aoTuV thing seems like some college project and doesn't even have an official site in English- it doesn't do CDs either.