Well, spent this morning loading the newest Ubuntu 8.04 on my desktop machine that I normally use for my tinkering around on the Internet and such.

Now, I will disclaimer everything with 1)I use Linux pretty much every day as part of my work. Servers and workstations. 2)I have been using Linux for some time now.

Ubuntu so far? Install was a breeze. If you have older NVIDIA cards, you will need a little help in the form of a utility called EnvyNG.

I had previous to this, a 64 bit install of Fedora, which did serve me well. After a couple hours of tinkering around - Kubuntu and KDE 4 are winning hands down!

Machine is very fast - and by today's standards is not a 'top of the line" machine.

Additional programs include Firefox 2 and 3(beta), OpenOffice suite, which has really made outstanding progress. In a nutshell, if you are looking to move from a already installed Linux installation, or just looking to try it out and see if it is workable for you - go get the KDE4 remix. I am VERY pleased so far.

try gentoo... if you have experience with the cli and understand the basics of *nix then you will like it a lot.

Why the yawn? New OS's are cool--OK, maybe not "cool" but when it is free and it works, that's not such a bad day. When install goes well it makes it even better.


Drew

often people of limited intelligence get sleepy when confronted with information they cant process... its perfectly normal. really...

Hey...she can yawn if she wants, doesn't bother me in the least.

Considering I get paid to do this sort of thing.
Quite well, if fact.....

rommel;

Perhaps, but I was eval'ing this more for the "Mom and Pop" type users, as well as the ones that traditionally would have the biggest heartaches - the "middle technology" types who just expect everything to 'just work'

See - Linux's main problem right now - is it can be set up so simple for a completely non-techy to work very well. It is easy for ones like me, very tech-oriented, to make it do whatever I want.

The middle ground - those who want to tinker and do advanced things, but lack the know-how to do things like cli, edit config files and the like - would be completely frustrated.

I think this release is one of the first that would allow them to 'tinker' without the frustration level.

got ya.... i started using linux with gentoo back in 99... and do a lot of support via irc for that distro... so excuse my biased enthusiasm for it.... but i think as an os linux is becoming a viable alternative and will only get better.. although i am not sure that any os can be used without knowing something.. at least not used without frustration.

Oh...no apologies needed!

I am very happy to see some excellent alternatives come up to the MS-suite of things. Now, for those groaning about another Linux-fanboy ranting on MS - I intend to do none of that.

I tend to look at O/S as tools for a job. You don't bring a screwdriver to pound nails, or a wrench to install a light fixture. I will use whatever O/S - Linux, Windows, Mac - that best fits what I need.

Ubuntu, like Red Hat and SuSE, is positioning themselves to be a desktop linux distro. The other two want the server side. Fine by me, really - you can't do both well. Ubuntu shipped KDE 4.0, which Windows users will tend to find an easier transition.
The performance is much better than KDE 3.5, and well, it is a slick visual interface.

The basic things users will want to do 'out of the box' are there. OpenOffice for your Word, Excel, and Powerpoint type work, Firefox (please install no-script when you choose this) for Internet work, and Evolution for your email. Evolution is turning up to be on par with Outlook, which was and is Microsoft's 'killer combo' (Exchange and Outlook - like it or hate it, they did excellent job in the business arena with that)

Now...if they can increase the number of games (hey..we all like them!) that are available, and straighten out the DVD and MP3 support to make that monkey-simple - they will be able to challenge MS on the consumer desktop. Yes, I do realize I said MP3 support. For the Linux folks, you already know there are codecs MUCH better for sound quality and file size, but that is not as widely supported via players and such as MP3s.

I like Linux. Always have. Even with the really early Slackware distros of the mid-nineties. I'd be using it instead of M$ crap right now if I could. But that isn't slated to happen for the near future.

Here's the problem with Linux, though- while it HAS been chipping away at Microsoft's market share to a point to make those pencil-necked geeks at Redmond nervous, the fact remains that you still need some iteration of Windows to get anywhere, as almost 90% of all software devs cater to M$. I thought the fiasco that is Vista woulda changed all of that (talk leaving enough rope to hang yourself with), but it hasn't as of yet.

The lack of games for Linux isn't even the main deal-breaker for me, either- I do a fair amount of 3D artwork using apps called "Poser" and "Carrara 5 Pro", and neither of them have decided to jump the M$ ship in favor of Linux yet. If they did, you can rest assured that I'd be having Ubuntu or SUSE or some other Linux distro installed in my computer in a heartbeat. But -until that happens- I'll be forced to stick with XP unless M$ manages to botch the OS to follow Vista as well.

well like Disaronno aptly said its like picking the right tool for the job.... if you need a hammer use the hammer but that shouldnt prevent you from using linux where you can.... i use it for most everything in my daily life and use osx and windows with what proprietary applications i must use them for... so each has their use but over all i prefer linux since it supports the free exchange of ideas and makes itself available to anyone it can... thats worth supporting in itself

Am with you Moof. While I use Linux on my desktop at home - some programs only run *well* on a particular platform. So if you have to use those tools, you run the O/S you need.

Funny part - is I will use Wine to run some programs. Now, I won't try the more intense programs that Moof uses under Wine - but some of the other ones actually run faster and have less problems under Wine/Linux than native windows !! Always thought that funny.