Ubuntu is described as 'Linux for human beings' -- the name is an ancient African word, meaning 'humanity to others', and also 'I am what I am because of who we all are'. As you might expect from this, Ubuntu is big on sharing: it is, and will remain, free of charge (although support can be bought), and comes in regular six-monthly updates under the guidance of charismatic South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth, who also has the distinction of being the first African citizen in space.
The latest Ubuntu version, 5.10 (also known as the 'Breezy Badger'), was launched in October 2005, and -- from its name at least -- sounds an improvement over version 5.04 (a.k.a. the 'Hoary Hedgehog'). It has had glowing reviews, won awards, and gone to the top of download lists. For distro-watchers, Ubuntu is based on Debian.
A free operating system sounds consumer-orientated, but Ubuntu is pitched at the enterprise -- witness the recent announcement that it has been certified for use with IBM's DB2 database. The main source of commercial support is Shuttleworth's Canonical organisation, but a number of other companies offer services in Europe, including some 13 in the UK.
Ubuntu is straightforward to download from the Ubuntu site, in two forms, each of which fits on one CD. The same disks are also available by post -- and at present even these are free -- to anyone with an account at the open-source community services site Launchpad.
The Ubuntu install disk can put the operating system on your machine (x86, Mac PowerPC, or x86 64-bit), while the Ubuntu Live CD launches the OS from the CD drive, allowing you to try Ubuntu without altering your system configuration at all.
We tried both. The Live version started fairly quickly, and gave us all the applications we needed. There was some waiting for CD reads, but the system was surprisingly usable in this mode, and it did a good job of showing off the features (more on these later).
The Live disk is not for general use, however. There is no password protection for any system functions. So with the Live disk running, you can do anything, up to and including a full disk format. Ubuntu Live makes an excellent introduction, and is a very useful disk to have around if you want to use Linux on an unfamiliar machine (as long as the owner trusts you).
For the full install, we gave Ubuntu to an old PC that had been labouring under a very tired Windows 2000 installation. Despite the 'Linux for human beings' line, the Ubuntu installer isn't the most friendly.. It doesn't waste its breath on graphical interfaces, but works in a blue-screen text environment that Windows hands know and, er, love. It's not bristling with help, but chugs on methodically, unless it hits a snag. For example, if the guided partitioning suggestions work, then you're fine. If not, the text environment is very demanding on file system knowledge, and awkward to navigate around.
After an initial install, the system goes back to add packages, until it has a full environment with a bunch of applications. The single disk uses updates across the Internet to make a complete installation and upgrade to the latest versions.
Unlike all the other Linux distros we have tried, Ubuntu does not ask you to set a root password during the install process. It actually, we are told, sets up a root user with a random password, that's never intended to be used. It then lets the first user have admin privileges, prompting for the password and performing actions through sudo ('superuser do') a Linux feature by which users can be allowed to operate with root privileges.
Basically, this is a way to hide the concept of 'root user' from people who might be intimidated by it. It has its critics in the Linux world, but worked for us. To use Ubuntu in a business setting, the admin will keep the first user account, and set up other user accounts with fewer privileges.
The operating system found most of the features of our hardware, including the network, and offered us the standard GNOME (2.12) environment with the usual applications -- most notably, OpenOffice 2, the Firefox browser, Gaim 1.5 for instant messaging and Evolution 2.4 for email, contact management and calendar functions. There's also a long list of games, which we didn't have time to explore.
Firefox and Gaim worked right away, while Evolution plugged straight into our email account. We noticed that Ubuntu had more mail account options than other Linux distributions, including the all-important Exchange connector -- and even a GroupWise connector.
The applications in Ubuntu are nicely configured for people migrating from Windows. For example, in OpenOffice, the document word-count feature is available in the same menu position as in Microsoft Word (under Tools), whereas other versions have it under File/Properties/Statistics (Ubuntu actually puts it in both places).
Adding a printer was easy and intuitive. System/Administration/Printing took me to the Printer screen, where adding a printer was a matter of clicking an icon and then selecting a networked printer.
To our surprise, Ubuntu also offers good features not seen elsewhere, such as a Language Selector -- and clearly the package integration has paid some attention to local detail. For example, on our machine, we selected British English as default, and found that the default Away message in Gaim was along the lines of: 'Awfully sorry chaps, I'm away'. Adding applications is also easier than with some other distros, thanks to the Synaptic package manager. The update manager works well, and comes with a front-end that explains the process very clearly while updating all parts of the system across the Internet.
Paid support from Canonical starts at $100 (~£58) per desktop per year, or $250 (~£145) with phone support included.
Conclusion
Ubuntu is very impressive, especially considering the compactness of the distribution, the fact that it's free, and the availability of a Live CD that can show off its functions conveniently.
The selection and integration of applications is good, and the update scheme works well. Connecting to Microsoft Exchange and networked printers is easy, too, so we think this distro should be fine in a business situation.
Some critics, searching desperately for something bad to say about Ubuntu, resort to carping about the default colour scheme, which is distinctly brown. However, it's easy enough to change to one of half-a-dozen pre-designed themes, or to create your own.
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Member reviews
Good hardware detection. Fast. Easy to keep up to date, and add applications. Good community support, though help pages so prolific it is not always obvious where to look.
- 9.50 out of 10
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9.50 out of 10I replaced Windows NT with Ubuntu - as the price was just right - and have never looked back! I am very happy with it.
I have found that upgrades and fixes can be an issue, as I have an Nvidia card. On some kernel upgrades I loose my graphics and have to descend into the plumbing to fix the problems. I wish Nvidia could get their act together and sort this out.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10This is a very solid distro that is very polished. The only downside is the hardware support isn't as broad as other distros like SUSE and Mandriva.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10I downloaded the live cd version and tried in 3 different laptops and 2 desktops. It was excellent, a really nice interface, easy to understand. You dont have to learn everything again to use it. It also installed everything on the system, including a generic WI-FI PC-card and I was online in about 15 minutes (after figuring out how to set up wi-fi connections in this particular system). A great set of applications and SIMPLE. Try it you wont be dissapointed, specially as you wont have to install it to try it out.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10I think that this Linux distribution is probably the best I've ever used. The partitioner worked fine for me even though I already had two windows partitions on there before. I also think that it has some great apps and since it's debian based there's no dependencies to worry about.
- 9.50 out of 10
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8.50 out of 10Ubuntu is, by far, the most competent linux distro.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10What else do I need?
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 8.00 out of 10
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10.00 out of 10Been using Ubuntu on my AMD 64 PC for months now and am throughly delighted. I used to be a Debian purist, but am rapidly becoming a big fan of Ubuntu!
- 8.70 out of 10
8.70 out of 10This is the most user-friendly distro I have used.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10I have been an avid Debian fan for many years on my servers and have gone through many different distro's looking for a good desktop solution. Once I started on (K)Ubuntu I have been totally sold. Brings all of the ease of updates that are had with Debian and the new Debian installer and puts it into a polished package. Ubuntu is the first Linux notebook I had up and running in under 1 hour and had all of my hardware (minus a card reader) supported (well a package download for RADEON drivers and setup of an NDIS wrapper for WIFI)
- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10I've been using Ubuntu in a production environment on desktops for a year now. It has installed perfectly on a variety of machines including laptops and has been virtually trouble free in that time. Breezy has some nice improvements over the previous releases (notably Openoffice 2.0 and easier network printing and wireless networking) although there has been an odd bug where the mouse pointer vanishes maybe once a week on two of my desktops. Updates are a breeze (sorry!) and my linux newbie users have handled the transition from Windows 2000 with relative ease - often with less difficulty than moving to XP. The ubuntu community is fantastic at providing free support too, and the available documentation is spot on. I dare anyone not to try it out. I'm seriously considering trying it out as a server installation (currently using Debian on servers)
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10I think this is the most promising Linux distribution. In a few years (3 to 6) Ubuntu could be a serious competitor to Microsoft Windows if its devs keep improving it like they have done the last year.
Do not forget that this distribution is only one year old, and now it is already the best.
- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10The Apt-get Feature Is So Easy to use to install just about everything you need...
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10What is there to say that hasn't been said? Ubuntu is easy to set-up. I don't care if it uses a textual install program, it's still simple. (Maybe because I didn't mess with partitions, and rather gave Ubuntu its own hard drive.)
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10I'm glad we have Ubuntu. Its making the other Distros wake up a bit - "Hey, mabye usability IS important!".....duh.
Thankyou Ubuntu.
- 8.00 out of 10
8.00 out of 10- 7.00 out of 10
7.00 out of 10I have never used linux untill now. I am on my way to switching form windows to linux as I write this. This distribution is great and I love it.
- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10I have tried several distributions of Linux including Suse, Redhat, Fedora, Linspire, and others. Ubuntu is my favorite by far! It comes with everything you need and then some and looks beautiful. Its definately ready for primetime.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Ubuntu is the best new Linux user distro on the planet.
It's the perfect Win98/ME/2Kreplacement though it falls
short of being a full WinXP replacement like OpenSuse 10.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10Who puts "default color is brown" in a list of cons? It takes half a dozen clicks to change it, and there's EVEN a good reason they chose brown. I think the product is good, but the reviewers behave like children, with such inane comments.
- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10Add to this well stable distro a highly knowledgeable online community that freely answers questions as soon as they hit the forum. Even paid services could never beat that.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 8.00 out of 10
8.00 out of 10Excellent up to date distribution with the software one needs to be productive. It's debian based - but without debians tendency to be years out of date.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10I've got Ubuntu up and running on a laptop, a server, and a desktop machine, for home use. All work just fine. The great thing about Ubuntu is that for everything I've needed so far, it's just worked.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10I find Ubuntu really cool in it's looks, features, set of aplications and the way it is configured.
Ubuntu scores in it's simplicity of desktop design and the arrangement of the menus. It is really easy to figure out what a novice user needs to do in his day to day activities in Ubuntu.
I found the package management system in Ubutnu to be very advanced than the similar ones in redhat and mandriva.
Neatly arranged menus, uncluttered desktop, very good hardware support, great set of applications ( I would like to see Mplayer as a part of it in near future! ) bundled with the OS, nice tools for doing the basic administrative tasks and many more..
That makes me confident to move from my old favourite RedHat to Ubuntu, the Real OS.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10This is by far the best distro that I've ever tried. I would still use it, even if they drop the "free" part
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10Works on every computer I've every installed it, including one Celeron 400 machine
- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10package management fails, not adhering to the standard. overhyped and slow.
debian based so that is also a con.
- 5.00 out of 10
5.00 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Excellent distro, easy to use, and has a very good selection of built-in applications. Plus, the apt-get/Synaptic apckage manager is great; way better than what we can find in RPM distros. Despite its youth, Ubuntu has quickly become the no1 Linux distribution. Two thumbs up!
- 9.30 out of 10
9.30 out of 10For good user help use,
http://ubuntuforums.org/
or
http://ubuntuguide.squarecows.com
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Very good debian based distro, which after setup is easy to use. Set it up for use within my company and haven't longed back to Windows yet. Runs on the dell inspiron 6000 without any problems which is very good compared to other distro's. (wireless was automatically configured :) )
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10I used to think Windows was the only desktop for a PC and thought Linux was just a hobby thing. I relaise now I never tried anything else to disprove this notion, until one day I booted Ubuntu LiveCD.
If you're a Windows user like I was don't take Linux for granted. Before you dismiss it ask yourself have you ever tried it? You need to find out for yourself. With Ubuntu this couldn't be easier as it comes as a Live CD so you can test without installing. You get EVERYTHING with it openOffice etc.. all on 1CD, it's amazing.
Sometimes during the day I now reach over and hug my PC, it'sad but true. Thanks Linux/Ubuntu for making my computer interesting again.
- 9.50 out of 10
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10.00 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10by far the esiest linux one can use, cant wait for the next release,
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10i have used suse, fedora, mandriva and ubuntu. ubuntu clearly is better than the other in correctly identifying my dell laptop's screen and wifi correctly. It is built by someone who finally understands what typical users want.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10The editor rated it from the point of an old Windows user, and that is not good a place to be, especially today. Completely wrong approach.
He even took into consideration feature of connecting up with existing windows network (MS Excange Server, etc). Do we rate the MS products by judging how compatible they are with Linux? How fair is that?
Ubuntu is one of the worst and featureless distibutions I have ever tried. It comes without make utility, wich prevents from compiling, and many other things. And, to put a cherry on top of the icecream it provides you with no REAL root user. It is completely opposite of what Linux should be.
That was the one Linux distro that lasted less than a week on my PC.
- 5.00 out of 10
5.00 out of 10- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10The first time I attempted to add such an esoteric package as sshd, the OS decided we had to delete numerous other packages (including Firefox). I assume this related to openssl, however, the wording made no mention as to why they were being deleted. Nor was there any mention of whether they would be rebuilt/reinstalled after. I know Ubuntu is striving for 'safe for Grandma', but they shouldn't fall into the Windows hell hole of hiding detailed info from users. Debian and Ubuntu could certainly learn a few things from BSD ports or gentoo portage in this arena.
- 8.00 out of 10
8.00 out of 10Its extremely easy to mantain end update/upgrade ( based on Debian packager ( apt/dpkg ) it is the most rock solid packager avaliable now ) and all necesary features is avaliable out of the box, you'll need suport only if you need to port aplications !!
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10All my hardare, including wireless and web cam works with Ubuntu. Online updates are a breeze and apt-get is a no brainer even for first time Linux users. As a postfix mail server it runs without a hitch and is easy to setup. The Ubuntu web site is easy to navagate and the forums are full of helpful people. The ship it feature allows you to order Ubuntu CD's that contain the Live CD and the full install CD. The CD alos includes the Open CD project which contains Open Source software for Windows. Ship it is free and is a great way to share Ubuntu with new Linux users.
- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10Linux-based Operating Systems have come a long way. Ubuntu is at the crest of the wave when it comes to ease of use and intuitiveness.
Ubuntu has everything you need for basic computing tasks. I love being able to update every program installed on my computer with just a few clicks! I still "need" Windows XP for games and that occasional Windows-only program however.
People should really try Ubuntu out. You can't really go wrong considering it's free.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10I've use Ubuntu for over 12 months now. It's the first "easy" to use distro that pretty much works out of the box with a wide range of hardware. It worked on my works laptop, my clone server and my 78yr fathers clone desktop. He took less than 2 weeks to be comfortable with it when changing from Windows XP. For free - what more can you ask? The only Windows machine we have in the house is my young daughter's PC which has Windows games on it.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10I decided to install ubuntu after having tried Mandrake, Mepis, Kanotix, Knoppix. I got really used to it, and had no major problems, everything worked well and I loved the theme - brown, resembling natural soil and sand... beautiful. Here I started enjoying gnome too (before I used KDE).
Unfortunately - and this is why Ubuntu did not get all top marks from me - I could not install it on Toshiba Qosmio g20 due to hard drive problems (probably concerning SATA support) and could not find help... - One of not many distros working with this machine was Vector Linux, and now I'm trying SuSe. I would probably go back to Ubuntu if the problem is solved.
www.paxel.net
- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10The popularity of Ubuntu within the Linux community is simple astounding. They are the world's most critical OS users and are quite demanding even when it is free as is Ubuntu. Linux has won over the hobbyists and serious hackers. That's the same crowd of bright minds who put Windows on the map back in the 80's and early '90's. Now it is Operating Systems such as Ubuntu who are benefiting by their hard and free labor.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Installer leaves alot to be desired, Lets not go into the Gnome issue, it has blown chunks on every distro I have used, so I'm solid KDE forever now. Grabbing my commercial Linux software tools for install was problematic compared to other distros but thats nothing new (go Debian) same with Xandros.
SuSe has been the all around winner in our tests for business and home bar none
- 5.50 out of 10
5.50 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10Despite all hype, Ubuntu is really slow when startup compare with FC4 (of course not counting archlinux); and when when running, feel slow and unresponsive. If you ever try quiting X and run in text mode, run mc you will see an ugly display problem which make me feel Ubuntu has not well tested. In whole, my feeling is unstable distro and not well tested.
- 6.50 out of 10
6.50 out of 10Many distros are based on Debian for good reason, it's huge and well made. The few faults of Debian relate to the fact that developers tend to have different priorities than users. Ubuntu is more pragmatic and gives users what they want and need with regular updates. The only real problem I have with any Debian-based distro is that OpenOffice is still only available in 32 bits. I use AMD64 and have to install it manually in a 32 bit chroot until the 64 bit version of OO comes out.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10I find valuable Ubuntu support in the Forums and the mailing list. I also found that Ubuntu is easily extensible by using the Universe repo sitory. People should not be put off by the install. It's not pretty but it does what it needs to do. However, I'd appreciate a little more work on the partitioning options.
This is one of the best distributions
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10It is Linux, it is free, and it works. It works on laptops (it sleeps and wakes up just fine). I'm using it right now on a Inspiron 700m, and everything but the SD slot works fine.
It may not play MP3s & DVDs when you first load it up, but you can go get that yourself later.
Q: Why chose it over SUSE?
A: Freedom/Liberte/GPL/Debian
- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10so far i am very happy with my Ubuntu. The areas i did not find on the distro were easily available and installable with very clear directions. Made me feel like i have been a linux user my entire life instead of a few months.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10Who says you can't get anything for nothing?
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10Works as expected, menus are well laid out, Windows interoperability very good, etc. I like it.
I installed Ubuntu on a Dell Precision M70 laptop so my two issues won't affect most people. First, I am having difficulty getting the wireless (Broadcom 4309) working (NdisWrapper etc). Second, the laptop display works just fine but if I boot while in a dock nothing comes up on the external monitor. ...but I'm not giving up.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10Is free, is good, is stable, have good suport.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10The installation went perfect on my x86 system. Install picked up the onboard lan and network card, plus installed all the drivers to make my Shuttle computer work right from the initial install. Ubuntu has an excellent support community where any questions I had were quickly found using the website search feature, or google. System updates well, and is easy to add new features with apt or synaptic frontend. Definitely a winner and finally convinced me to abandon Windows permanently.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10read about it in a magazine saw review at this site downloaded itlast night and installed this morning. If you can install win 98 then this is a daudle. Took a bit of time to install -but if you want to be free of the ever more paranoid Gates registration process it is a good place to start.
- 8.00 out of 10
8.00 out of 10The sc. "Finalize Scripts" are also very helpful:
See
http://home.online.no/~osmoma/how2burn.html#Ubuntu
- 8.00 out of 10
8.00 out of 10Though a SUSE user I really prefer to use Ubuntu on my notebook. Simply excellent product from Ubuntu community.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10My laptop will also get the ubuntu conversion treatment soon enough - now software companies start compiling that killer software you guys have for linux... eg dreamweaver/creative suite etc etc
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10This is the first version of Linux that I have managed to get what I wanted it to do without hours of messing around. The desktop was quick to set up with the ability to play MP3's and DVD's. Next I installed Apache web server, PHP and Mysql through just a few clicks in the synaptic package manager. All worked fine and accessable from the network. Next ProFTP was installed (never got this far before) and works fine.
Initially I was using wired ethernet to connect to the network but tried an old Belkin USB wireless adaptor which worked fine and just needed activating once it had been detected. Enabled file sharing through Simba and it allowed sharing with XP PC's and the XP PC's gained access to shared files on the Ubuntu PC with the minimum of fuss.
Finally, I connected to an old Canon LBP-8IV network printer which again worked without a problem.
Now using as a day to day desktop and is the first Linux distro that I have been happy to do so. Installation is on a PC Chips motherboard with 1300 Duron and 256mb DDR ram.
Whilst there are ample websites dedicated to Ubuntu, the newsgroups are on newserver news.gmane.org which is free.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10I love this distro mainly because everything just works and it uses the debian apt repository system for easy software installation.
Only caveate is beware of unstable and testing repositories - but this isn't a major concern if you stick with stable.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10...in terms of the choice, organization and integration of indidual applications.
- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10This was my first foray into linux. I'll never go back. 'Nuff said.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10I do not consider myself a computer expert although I have been working with computers since vacuum tubes. My business requires that I run some proprietory Windows only software. I began investigating GNU/Linux with Caldera. There was always something lacking in many of the different distros tried since then or I just wasn't knowledgable enough to figure it out. UBUNTU 5.10 is the first time I could WAN network 10 machines including laptops (Windows 5 and Linux 5) together perfectly. Even the proprietary Windows programs run on it with WINE, a simple download. I will never have to purchase Windows again. UBUNTU has changed the world as far as I am concerned.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 7.50 out of 10
7.50 out of 10The choice of Gnome as the default GUI is good for people migrating from Windows. Gnome has enough options to show what Linux can do, without having so many that it gets baffling. KDE fans will have different opinions about this.
I have been watching Linux for about ten years. Every distro made the claim that it could replace Windows for the home user. Ubuntu was the first distro that I felp passed the "Auntie Mabel" test. I could have handed a machine with Ubuntu 5.04 to Auntie Mabel with the expectation that she could use it. I expect 5.10 to be better.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10The Ubuntu community is like a snowball, picking up fans all the time. The good thing about this is that there's a lot of people who know a lot more about Linux than I do who've tried things, got them to work and documented them on the Ubuntu wiki - it's made my life easier by far.
Ubuntu is my distro of choice, is on three of my PCs (a desktop, a laptop and a GUI-less server running off a Compact Flash card) and will be on many more. It's the first one I've found that I really, really (really) like.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10I've been using Ubuntu for about 6 months now. I've completely removed Windows. The Ubuntu support forums are great, and you can get free CDs using Ubuntu's Shipit service!
The different versions even have funny names.
I am currently using the 64-bit AMD64 version of Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) which I upgraded from Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog).
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10I had only gone through one other distro of linux before deciding Ubuntu was the one for me. I used Red Hat 9 for a while, and it was pretty nice. But then someone did a speech in speech class and handed out Ubuntu CDs to us. I tried it and WHAM! I loved it! It automatically configured everything (RH9 asks too many questions). The only problem I have with Ubuntu is that on my wireless comp i had to do extensive research to configure the wireless usb.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 2.00 out of 10
2.00 out of 10- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10Setting up does requre a little knowledge, For a compleat newbie to linux I would recommend Mepis or pclinuxos that auto install so easily and are windows user friendly.
Has all the features a modern linux distro should have, first distro for me that works well with my thinkpad laptop T21
sees my laptop battery, plugs and play cds/usb flash drives, reads my windows xp partition.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10Ubuntu does everything I need, from graphic work to games. After getting bored with xp and not remotely interested in Vista with its big brother concept. I started trying Linux distros one after the other. Nothing felt right, something was alays missing - until I found Ubuntu.
Now I run Ubuntu and Ubuntu only on both my boxes.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Ubuntu has a great graphical interface, and it has some great modding features too (better than ms explorer). It comes with a lot of great programs! After installing some extra programs like a good and fast CD/DVD burner (gnomebaker), a nice game (supertux), and a good mailclient (thunderbird), I had every program I needed in Ubuntu. Ubuntu has an excellent multimedia player (totem media player), after installing the codecs it played every multimedia file format I had. Synaptic Package Manager is a great tool for linux newbies to add/remove programs. The Ubuntu-makers did a great job. There's a lot of info on the net about ubuntu linux, it has a great support! Use it a couple of weeks and you will be addicted. Free your mind, use Ubuntu!
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10To get advanced features like wireless networking with WPA takes a bit of trickery, but you'd expect that (Windows can be just as much of a pain) ... the docos at www.ubuntu.com are comprehensive ... what can I say, I think I'm almost ready to move my development platform over to Linux at last!!
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10audio/video works
wireless intel pro bg2200 works
thinkpad buttons work
i use openbox as desktop manager, foobar2000 over wine, opera, k3b, hydrogen, gthumb, f-spot, imagemagick, anjuta, eclipse, LAMPP, totem, openoffice2, firefox, gaim, limewire, and a few games. these run comfortably fast without crashing randomly.
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8.00 out of 10This os is very sexy, but on the other hand the core is extreemly buggy and the instalation process is even worse, it took me over 6 attempts to get it working correctly and still the perfomance was very dim.
- 8.00 out of 10
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9.50 out of 10I first run the live cd on the centrino laptop and show everything, even the wireless card.
Then I show the task manager, and I show the use of memory 100MB (!) I opened many many applications and never exceded 500MB. In the windows system I start with 300 and I touch one GB.
The live cd is full fuctional. You can even download updates and try more applications. It persuade me to turn on linux and especially ubuntu linux.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10A nice example of how friendly linux can truly be, but falls short in the capability department. I struggled with simple tasks like adding DVD playing/creation software, audio-video codecs, and changing hardware settings (monitor type, refresh, 3d graphics drivers, etc.). A good distro for Grandma or the minimalist, but not for this seasoned WinXP user. My preference is still with Suse 10.0 and PCLOS 0.92
- 6.00 out of 10
6.00 out of 10Switched to Ubuntu Linux because I was sick of the adware, spyware, viruses being written to mess with Windows. Haven't had one problem since migrating. And the fact that you ask for one free Live CD and they send you 5 is even better. Linux users unite. This newb has moved away from the dark side into the light.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10I am a web programmer and use Ubuntu 5.10 both for my work and in my leisure time
- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10nuff said
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10Installed on an old pc for a freind for their second PC in their house. All the windows users are finding their way around it no problem. It does everything they need and install of applications after original install is very easy and efficient.
- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10Anyone with no Linux experience, looking for an alternative to Windows should know Ubuntu requires some effort. On the initial installation, Ubuntu detects and configures everything great, but additional features - such as an ability to play MP3's could require command line input along with the download of additional "packages". This could be intimidating, but, trust me, it's all that diffucult. Check out the forum - great source of HowTos and information.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10I love it. Installed it on a Dell Dimension 8400 and an IBM Thinkpad T21 and it works beautifully on both of them.
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8.00 out of 10i use Ubuntu at home and it's perfect for home users, internet is easy to configure and office documents are easy to handle.
Ubunto has it all !!!
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10Primary OS on my HP laptop for a few months now. Everything works, wireless, bluetooth, etc. Make the switch.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Loaded Ubuntu on an old Sh-box computer with an old AMD 1.4 G, 80 G HD, Linksys NIC and even my ludite wife could figure it out and uses it for Web surfing while I use it as a 'sandbox.'
Starting installing any/every/thing then quickly moved on to building my own kernel.
Had one question and directed it to Linuxformat instead of their own Forums.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10very polished. linux for everyone.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10This does everything, easily, and it's free. Web documentation and forums are excellent. Between ubuntuforums.org and google, there's nothing I haven't easily been able to find documentation for and set up myself, even though my previous Linux experience is minimal. I'm a total convert.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10If I was a person building a new computer without a high cost operating system....I would recommend this one. I would recommend this linux os to the newbie and the advanced users
- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10Better than the rest. Previous systems: SuSe, FreeBSD, Debian.
Easy to set everything up (with a little help from http://www.ubuntuforums.org). I love Synaptic!
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10I run Windows at home, and Linux on my hosting server which is managed by my hosting company. The hosting server (my website) is on CentOS so I thought of trying it. Did not like it one bit. Then I went for Suse, which is suggested as a personal OS. It is good, but ubuntu is faster (imo) and recognized everything on my Thinkpad 570E (from 1999!) immediately. It's superb. The brown skin is yucky but I can change it to whatever I want!
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10I'm a longtime *nix geek (20 years or so) who feels most at home at a UNIX command line. But I thought I'd give Ubuntu a try and I'm glad I did. Based on its ease of installation and use, its attractive interface, and its ability to correctly detect and configure most hardware, I'm very comfortable recommending it to less geeky acquaintances. I hope to convert more and more windoze refugees to Linux via Ubuntu.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Linux itself just isn't ready for the desktop if you are a Windows user. So many things that I just expected to work didn't.
I'm not a n00b, I just expect things to work correctly and efficiently. Windows isn't perfect mind you, but Linux has sooooooo far to go.
That said, out of the Linux distros I have tried, Ubuntu ranks among the best of them.
If you are a Windows user thinking of migrating, don't expect everything to work as well as it does in Windows - it won't. However, if you only need to do very basic functions such as web browsing, email, and generic word processing, then this would definitely suffice.
Power Windows users, however, probably wouldn't like this product.
If you really don't like Windows, get a Mac.
- 7.50 out of 10
7.50 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10I've installed Ubuntu as well as Fedora, Suse, Gentoo. Ubuntu is the easiest to install and provides the slickest package management and updating routines -- far better than Fedora.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10Ubuntu is, in one word, great. It has all the features you'd wish, is free, has regular updates and driver support is very good. The best thing is that one can customize it to one's personal flavour, for example, I prefer a fast Desktop Manager, so I installed Xubuntu, which uses the Xfce window manager. I decided to take the risk to use the unstable version, which also uses the new, unstable Xfce, and it works great. Xfce is developed very fast with a lot of new features, which fits perfectly in Ubuntu's (or Xubuntu's) fast release cycle.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Ubuntu is a very versatile and powerful OS that I've been using for about a year now. While the default install is GNOME, I prefer to install the kubuntu package and run KDE instead. The support and ease of use is amazing. The Ubuntu webpage is phenomenal. Looking forward to the Dapper Drake release this year!
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10.00 out of 10Installed and runs flawlessly on two systems. One is a new Sony VAIO A series laptop, the other is an old 450MHz Pentium 3 box with limited RAM.
Networking (wired & wireless), internet access, sound, DVD-RW, network shares, and almost everything else was recognized and configured. It even auto-recognized the 1920x1200 screen on the VAIO laptop (which SUSE did not recognize).
The only manual configuration needed was (i) the soft buttons on the VAIO, (ii) graphic accelleration on the VAIO, (iii) enabling NTFS read/write support.
- 9.00 out of 10
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9.50 out of 10Xandros has an excellent product, as does DSL. If you are looking for a portable product then DSL (Damn Small Linux) is for you. Otherwise, as a good OS on an older system, Ubuntu is not to be missed.
Pound for pound or dollar for dollar, Ubuntu is where it is at.
- 6.50 out of 10
6.50 out of 10I know in some cases this isn't true, but when it comes to software on your home pc - there is nothing like it. Ubuntu has a thriving community. A great distro for desktop and server. Give it a try and be sure to pop in and say hello on IRC (Freenode #ubuntu).
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10Easy to setup and great functionality right out of the box.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10If I were to use an alternative to Windows 2000, this would be it. My only concerns are the default font (I prefer Windows') and the mess of directories common to Linux.
Also, this can't run on old hardware whereas Windows 2000 not only runs, but runs fast.
- 6.50 out of 10
6.50 out of 10Absolutely, the best flavour of Linux. I installed this on AMD64 with a new motherboard, wireless lan, all the newest gear and Ubuntu surpassed my expectations in every way. Many of the Debian features are already great such as disk partitioner, package managers, but I was able to pretty much auto-install nearly everything with all the best options for example the ext3 journaling file system with superfast b+ tree indexing and hashing. Wow! fast and stable. mount network connected systems on your desktop, use your ipod, podcast, anything windows can do but better, faster, and more secure. Kick ass..!
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9.50 out of 10Try Dapper. You'll be glad you did.
- 8.00 out of 10
8.00 out of 10I found this distro to be very easy to install and setup. It was very easy to upgrade the kernal to SMP version to run on my dual AMD MP computer. I had problems with most of the other distro's including commercial version to get the SMP kernal running.
Great product.
- 8.00 out of 10
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8.50 out of 10The authors of this article have summed it up as well as the users: one excellent product. Complete. Balanced (power vs usability). What more needs to be said. Oh yes free.WOW!
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Ubuntu Live and the full install is great for first time users. However, linux as a whole is still not ready for the masses of windows users that depend on dumbed down commands and spoon fed answers.
I use Ubuntu as a starter for new users and have them graduate to SUSE after a few months.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10I've tried a variety of Linux distros on my laptop, with varying success.
Ubuntu's hardware detection is excellent on my aging Toshiba Portege 7220.
A number of the comments posted here say it is not for hardened Windows users but I'd have to disagree with that. I can do EVERYTHING I used to do on Windows, with the only exception being playing games (and even that is changing! Windows users moaning about not being able to play games, look at Wine or Cedega, not to mention the number of games being ported to Linux. Remember, Google is your friend!). My laptop is too old and slow to run Windows XP but Ubuntu gives me an XP like experience without having to buy a faster laptop. Those looking for a more XP like interface may want to install Kubuntu instead, which is just Ubuntu with a KDE interface and KDE applications, the underlying OS is the same.
Highly recommended Linux distro, closely followed by SUSE Linux.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10The best operating system I've ever seen.
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10.00 out of 10