Ubuntu Linux
I first heard of Ubuntu Linux on Neowin, where someone posted about a company that was shipping free Linux CDs from a distro called “Ubuntu”. What an odd name for a Linux distro, I thought, but I like free things. So I ordered some. Some? Not just one? Well, when I ordered, they only shipped in packs of 15, because they come from Switzerland and airmail was way more expensive than the CDs themselves. So I got, eh, 30. I’ve been giving them out to people in my CS class… go evangelism!
The CDs arrived just a week later in very attractive packaging. The overall first impression was of a slick commercial-looking product.
The package included both an install CD (orange) and a “live” CD that you can boot from just to test things out. I adore the live CD because I use it on computer repair jobs. Windows is hosed and won’t boot? No problem! Just pop in UbuntuLive and it’ll mount the damaged drive. You can then copy files across a network to save them, or even edit a corrupted boot.ini or something else that is preventing Windows from functioning. Very handy, very time-saving.
I heard that Ubuntu, a Debian-based distro, was extremely slick and streamlined, as well as having good laptop support. Although SuSE also has good laptop support, I wanted to try Ubuntu out.
The installation for Ubuntu is quite poor, far more so than SuSE, Mandrake, or even Red Hat. It’s text-based, which is like Windows XP’s… but how many people have to install XP? Very few. However, it doesn’t even have some of the partitioning tools like KPart which other distros’ installs have. This means that I had to partition my laptop’s drive before the install. This would wipe out about 80% of potential converts right there… no partitioning. I guess I could’ve used the Live CD to boot in and partition, then reboot to install… but new Linux users won’t know how to do that! Poor practice.
Once I got through the installation, I was presented with a very attractive logon screen. If you’re the only user on the system, it’s easy to disable the login, but I like it for password-protection 
The default desktop is very minimal, in keeping with Ubuntu’s choice of Gnome as desktop (rather than SuSE, which uses KDE. I installed KDE so I could use Umbrello, but quickly switched back… you can tell the Ubuntu people didn’t put much work into making KDE look good or work well.
Gnome in and of itself is very nice. One program for each function, rather than the myriad of different ones KDE throws at you (example: nine text editors installed by default on SuSE). However, it is way ugly. Check out this default Firefox theme…
However, it’s pretty easy to change things like that around, so not a big deal. But does Ubuntu live up to its promised compatibility. Surprisingly yes! The Dell 600m is pretty new, but everything is working great. My 1400×1050 screen runs at full resolution. Sound and Wi-Fi both work with minimal tweakage (much less than my horror stories with SuSE). My camera is even detected! The Ubuntu team has done a great job making this distro work well out of the box.
Some things feel a bit odd about Ubuntu, however. It’s obviously intended to be both 1) a complete replacement for Windows (because of the lack of partitioning) and 2) a new-user-friendly distro, with an effort to emulate Windows. So why the nasty install and the decision to not have a root user? The root user is usually used to perform all heavy lifting for the system, while a normal user doesn’t have that power (read: harder to mess things up). But in Ubuntu, the user you create while installing has root privilege, which means you can blow stuff up with the touch of a button.
The new release of Ubuntu, coming in April, actually seems to fix a lot of problems. I’m running a beta version of it and it truly is great. Runs faster than Windows and is clean and nice. I’m running Linux as a primary OS on BOTH of my computers now. Crazy.
If you want an Ubuntu CD, I can send one to you for the cost of shipping. I have lots 
or you can just download the ISO from http://www.ubuntulinux.org !
oOo looks spiffy. So how does it compare to Suse then in usability and user friendliness?
I found it a bit easier to just “jump right in” with SuSE… but now that I have it tweaked, I would say Ubuntu just works better. It’s a tossup, I like them both.
Hmm..sounds great Seth. I am currently installing Linux Slackware on an old laptop of mine, just to test it out. I’ve got a little instruction booklet, so it’ll be semi-easy. After I get it up and running, I’ll try to install SuSE later on, but for now I just wanna get my hands dirty with any Linux.
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I’d never heard of Ubuntu Linux until I saw it on Seths blog. It looks cool, and after checking out the Ubuntu [...]
Well, i’m thinking about dual booting WinXP and linux, but I’m a bit stuck at the partitioning part. Do I need to partition before installing a Linux distro, or will the install do it for me and I only need to defrag my drive? But then It’ll overwrite windows?
I was thinking about purchasing Ubuntu, but you say it doesn’t have a partition program in it, so I’m quite stuck.
If you could give me some hints? :p
You can’t purchase Ubuntu, it’s free. You would need a partitioning program, since the installer can’t do it. I would suggest waiting until mid-February, when they start taking orders for Ubuntu5 CDs (Hoary), then placing an order. Then use the Live CD to load Ubuntu and partition your drive. Then you can install.
Or pick a distro with more things included, like SuSE. SuSE is wonderful.
I installed Ubuntu from the ISO image I downloaded and burned. I now have a dual boot Win2000/Ubuntu system. I can’t remember it in detail, it’s about three weeks ago that I installed it, but I think there was an option to do a custom installation from the installation CD. If you choose that, you can partition your hard drive.
I installed the boot/root partition as the second partition on my first HD, and it works fine. With grub.
But I don’t know if it can resize FAT partitions, like SuSE can (if I’m right), because I had 12 gigs of unpartitioned space on my first HD, so there was no need to do that (and /dev/hda1 is NTFS, so I couldn’t do it anyway).
Yep Stefan, that is what I was referring to, guess I should’ve been more clear. You can create partitions just fine, but there is no true partitioning tool that allows you to move and resize partitions.
I heard about Ubuntu the other week on Slashdot.org and recently got around to downloading, burning, and trying out the LiveCD. Overall, I think it’s really good. The only problem that I had with it was that I couldn’t seem to run any programs after I set up the network connection…
purchasing -> trying* =)
Thx for your replies, I’ll try it on an old computer anyway.
I’ll give SuSe a try too.
Not just debian based…they are the same with Debian!!But they coolest because they can automatic mount your disk and other systems and also they recognize enery device on their own…
Um, no. Ubuntu is not Debian-compatible.