T1B

Who's tried it? Who wants to give it a go?

Ubuntu ~ this version has a "Mac" look

Kubuntu ~ this version has a "Windows" look

Any assistance I can give, I will, from installation to adding software.

What are its highlights? I have a server sitting n the corner waiting for me to free up enough time to finish it. ( started the project months ago but I have no tinkering time)

I was going to use a version of Redhat Linux.

We run Ubuntu on an internal box at my workplace. We don't use the GUI, though. From what I've seen, it looks nice.

It's distributed for free, free to use for the end user.

It's (for all practical purposes) virus-free.

It has a large selection of add-on software in the Ubuntu Software Repositories.

It makes an excellent server choice. Does not suffer from "log lag" as Windows does, which means it
does not require reboots for most (if not almost all purposes).

Under WINE, you can run many Windows based software apps.

Highly customizable. Light years ahead of Microsoft in terms of 3-D desktops and such.

So go to one of my links and download the bootable ISO, burn it as an ISO, and run Ubuntu as
a "live CD", with no harm to your current Windows installation.

One of the advantages (perhaps THE advantage) of Ubuntu over other distros is that there is minimal configuration involved. I have tried a lot of different distros, and with each one, I had to do some manual configuration to make everything work properly. With Ubuntu, I really didn't have to do anything. I have it on my ThinkPad at work, and I use it now because I have enough to worry about without having to spend some amount of time tweaking hardware configuration settings on my laptop. After installing Ubuntu, my sound card worked, my graphics card worked (with 3D acceleration), my wireless card worked; basically, it detected all my hardware and configured it correctly. That's what Ubuntu does quite well. The caveat here is that if you have, say, a wireless chipset that doesn't have good open source support ('sup Dell and their new Broadcom-based wireless cards, bastards!) it may not work under Ubuntu any better than under another distro. But, if you have something with good open source drivers, like the Intel Pro Wireless cards, it will install the ipw**** stuff for you, which is nice. I also like that you get patches pretty promptly after vulnerabilities are discovered. Ubuntu released a Firefox patch the same day Mozilla announced it was available so that everyone could update to v2.0.0.5 right away.

On the con side, I do not like the security scheme of Ubuntu. When you create a user at install time, it will give that user a lot of privileges that a regular user shouldn't have, including full sudo privileges. I also detest that it never prompts you to set a root password; this is the worst flaw in Ubuntu, IMO. Certainly you can remedy these issues, but I simply don't like the default setup. Also, support is community based, which means if you have trouble, you can Google or search message boards, and you will get varying degrees of help. In this respect, it's no better than, say, Fedora. Maybe OK for a personal desktop, but it's the primary reason we don't use it for critical systems. I don't know about you, but if my job depends on systems being stable (and it does) I like the cozy feeling of knowing my ass is covered by a software contract. We use RHEL on our mission-critical enterprise systems and SLES on our supercomputers, and I have no qualms about asking my boss for the jack to pay for those contracts because it's a nice CYA solution.

In short, I would definitely give Ubuntu a try as an OS for your personal PC, but you may want to think twice about using it for any kind of critical system.

Excellent points. I think that there is progress being made on the OSS front, but there is much work still to be done.

Myself, I've been having trouble installing Java on Ubuntu.

Hobbes wrote: When you create a user at install time, it will give that user a lot of privileges that a regular user shouldn't have, including full sudo privileges. I also detest that it never prompts you to set a root password; this is the worst flaw in Ubuntu, IMO.

That's untrue. Ubuntu does not give full sudo rights unless you specifically log in as root.

You can chmod or chown any directory you want, but it isn't a default setting.

PSUFAN wrote: Myself, I've been having trouble installing Java on Ubuntu.

The Java installer should be in your package manager (Adept, or whatever). Easy-Peasy.
...or, follow these instructions...
Installing Java on Ubuntu

I was under the impression that the root account was disabled by default in Ubuntu? At any rate, I use sudo all of the time

PSUFAN wrote:I was under the impression that the root account was disabled by default in Ubuntu?

It's locked, by default.

PSUFAN wrote: At any rate, I use sudo all of the time

That's fine, so do I. Any app or installer the needs it can be opened in a terminal with sudo.

You might also consider downloading VMWare Server (Free - http://www.vmware.com/products/server/get.html), and installing/testing Operating systems and software on that. It gives you an easy way to create a test environment for free where you can install OS' or have preconfigured OS' ready to go for software/development/setup testing.

Whats even cooler is that you can just download pre-configured machines ready to load and run - http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/

ive been playing with ubuntu for a while and just recently installed 7.04 on my laptop... its been fun so far..

I used Kubuntu but took it off to try XUbuntu but I like the KDE desktop so much I I am using it with XUbuntu.

I think the Ubuntu family is one of the best Linux distros out there. A new one twice a year. They seem to have a stable 'staff' so to speak.

I used to use Kanotix but the developers had a fight so it has not gone anywhere for a couple years now, which is too bad as I liked it.

run virtual windows.. works pretty well, except I have a wide screen laptop, and im having trouble getting it to go full screen.. oh well.

http://www.virtualbox.org/