In my previous article, I was talking (rather ranting…) about how dejected I’m with Microsoft Vista. I believe it was good in one way as it made me explore the latest version of a cool and elegant desktop Linux operating system (OS) – Ubuntu 8.04 LTS!. If you’re in India and if you’re planning to download it, I would suggest you use the Singapore mirror for the same – blazing speed!
I’m not gonna talk much about the operating system; ‘ll just include some screen shots from my system so that you can get a clear picture of how good it looks – anyways, looks are subjective. Functionally, I’m finding it to be too good, and Linux has come a long way in trying to render a typical Microsoft-ish user friendliness in its user interfaces. Mine is a Pentium dual core 2.7 GHz system with 512 MB RAM and 80 GB hard disk, and the entire installation took a little over twenty minutes and 2.2 GB of hard disk space. All of the peripherals got detected (including my 802.11 b/g wireless adapter), and I didn’t have trouble looking for hardware drivers – which is a great thing, look where Linux has come!
Immediately after installation, you reboot your system, and to my surprise there was this extremely clean and user friendly ‘Ubuntu Update’ system that warned me that my OS is out of date, and some 107 updates are available for download. I happily updated my system, and also downloaded a few more applications for video, music, internet and graphics. After a fresh install of the OS, you are left with no mp3/mpeg/avi support, and I was astonished to find that I’m able to automatically search and install the suitable codec as and when I click on the multimedia files encoded in different formats – great stuff!
And now, ‘m just gonna shut up and show you those screen shots. I would be happy to see more users switch to Ubuntu Linux 
And if at all you happen to install and use Ubuntu, please share your thoughts and comments here.
Well, if you want any specific screenshot, scrap a comment and you’ll have it here!!
I use Fedora as my Office front end (For Graphics and Animation) and Ubuntu on my home system for all and every other thing..and m loving it!
I also like to remaster my own Ubuntu clone called ‘Pingu” which has lots of games (for my kids). Its a complete distro. I use Remastersys to achieve this.
That’s cool. Actually, ‘m a fan of Fedora and PCLinuxOS…but the number of CDs required to install them is more…laborious I should say considering the broadband speeds in our country!!
I, too, have fallen head over heels for this OS. This is the first Linux distro that actually works on my HP laptop and it is beautiful and fast! As soon as I can get all of my virtual machines that I use in class to work in Ubuntu, I will be done with MS OS's for awhile, at least until Windows 7.
Cheers!
Wow! this is great news that everyone is liking Ubuntu. Not sure how Windows 7 is gonna fair though, but have a positive feeling that all the negatives of Vista will be eliminated on this new version of Windows. My brother has a HP laptop, and the current version of Ubuntu is lightning-fast on his laptop. Vive la Linux!!
I have an HP as well and it is a thing of beauty if you don't count a bad
power connector
I agree. Even after a lot of feedback from the users HP doesn't seem to be getting the power connector thingy right for the commercial customers. Having said that, the notebooks and their connectors are extremely well-done for corporate customers.. probably, commercial customers mean more 'service' business than corporate ones.. !! what do you think?