Ubuntu is awesome.

I personally use Kubuntu 6.06 as I prefer the KDE environment to the Gnome one (gave both a try, KDE was more to my taste).

I've been using it since v4 (Breezy?).

I've spent numerous hours in Redhat and Mandrake, and I'd have to say Ubuntu is by far more "human" oriented as they claim to be.

Software installation is simple using Synaptic or (preferred) apt-get from the command line.

There are numerous sources for support, namely http://ubuntuforums.org/, http://ubuntuguide.org/, and Canonical's own support line.

It's not "totally" ready for the desktop (is any Linux?) given the state of Wine/Cedega, but I've been able to get a few choice Windows-only apps working using Wine. Games of course are another matter.

Ubuntu's own release cycle is every 6 months, which appears to be greater than any other Linux distro's. That means that you can expect major bug fixes, newer features, and movement toward a more user-friendly platform as time goes on.

Also, given the state of SDL and OpenGL, Ubuntu makes a decent development platform.

If you have any questions, I'd be happy to try to help :)

Cheers,
- m³

I just started a new job and i'm using kubuntu on my workstation. It's very nice. Normally, i stick with Enlightenment, but i haven't had the time to set it up the way i like it yet. I've been using the default KDE setup. KDE has a lot of bells and whistles to it, i think i might make the switch from Enlightenment! The help files were also helpfull (how ironic!)

I will definately be installing kubuntu in the near future.

I use Ubuntu 6.06 at home and at work. I never used it until I began my new job back in April and have not regretted it. I've used other popular distros of linux and have to say that I'm probably happiest with Ubuntu. Other than the Wacom, everything else should work with little to no effort (haven't tried the tablet, so I simply don't know, you can search the forums).

I've used Ubuntu occasionally, but I always end up coming back to Debian. Every time I've tried it I've noticed no difference at all except for minor stability problems in Ubuntu that just aren't there in Debian, and somewhat worse performance.

Perhaps I haven't noticed any difference simply because I'm used to doing things the hard way,thus missing out on possibly excellent GUI alternatives.

I just installed it on my iBook.

There was a problem with the screen - it insisted on running 1024x768 but it only goes up to 800x600. But that was only an issue specific to this computer.

Otherwise the system is brain dead simple and it works.

Once installed I just went to the Add\Remove thing and installed Abiword and Blender and so on. Nothing to it.

Apt-get is about a billion times faster than Yum. I hate Yum. On Fedora I have Yum. Sometimes it doesn't work, spits out errors about bad XML. And it always takes forever downloading and grinding through lists of files or something. It will sit there processing for about 5 minutes before telling me "Nothing to do" because it doesn't have the package I asked for.

At least when apt-get doesn't have something it tells me right away even on my old computers.

(I've got a 466mhz iBook, 400mhz Octane2 and a 733mhz Pentium3.(

i've been using ubuntu for a time, and was very satisfied.
but i would recommend MEPIS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEPIS
it's based on ubuntu but with kde ( ususally gnome is preinstalled ), it has better hardware recognition.

anyway as long if its debian, it rocks ;)

I couldn't get it to work, or Mandrake - Gentoo worked though, for a short time before the machine died.

May be I'll try it again, it seems to have an active developers and forums, and is properly free and not leading to one or another commerical product like Red Hat or Mandrake.

Red Hat Fedora Core 2 got it's knickers in a twist with some dependency loop that wouldn't let me uninstall something until I installed something that depended on something I couldn't install. Obviously that was ages ago.

Mandrake I was most impressed with things "just working". Even installed my TV Card and sound drivers for me.

I would think as a Debian user you'll find yourself right at home in Ubuntu though. It's Debian, just more on the edge isn't it?

Quote: Original post by mauzi_the_Dude
i've been using ubuntu for a time, and was very satisfied.
but i would recommend MEPIS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEPIS
it's based on ubuntu but with kde ( ususally gnome is preinstalled ), it has better hardware recognition.

anyway as long if its debian, it rocks ;)

The Ubuntu distribution includes Gnome as the window manager. Kubuntu includes KDE.

I usually get regular old Ubuntu and "apt-get install kde". No problems so far.

I had Ubuntu installed for a month or two. It is really user-friendly distro.
If you need a distro which just works "out-of-box" Ubuntu is for you.
However it has some things that I don't like, i.e. it installs so many apps that I don't need.

I like more controln of my system so now turned back to Slackware. It's much simpler in administration. Very easy scripts and I don't need to click through million windows to enable or disable something. It also boots much faster.