ubuntu 6.06
Ubuntu 6.06 is final, and it’s a wonderful release. In fact, I’m ready to declare Ubuntu the one true linux distribution, not that anyone asked. Ubuntu is just a delight to use — I’ve been using it on my work laptop for months — and it really is easy enough that your grandmother could use it. There’s also a nifty script available which will set up all the “non-open-source” stuff that is normally a royal pain in the ass to do in linux (mp3 support, browser plug-ins, etc.).
They’ve got free downloads available for PCs and Macs, and if you don’t feel like burning a ISO to CD they’ll even send you a couple copies of Ubuntu on bootable CD free of charge. And: they offer a free server edition which will allow you to set up a LAMP server (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) with one click. This is way, way cool, as there are a lot of free software projects using LAMP as their base technologies.
All this magnanimosity is courtesy of probably-crazy South African multi-millionaire Mark Shuttleworth, who’s put a lot of his own money into polishing this flavor of linux. He’s also put resources into a lot of nifty free scheduling and calendaring tools for schools. Hey, thanks, Mark!
~jeff
June 3rd, 2006 at 4:22 pm
Personally I use Kubuntu because Gnome irritates me. There is also the lightweight xubuntu which looks very promissing.
But yes, the *buntu family is awesome! Mark Shuttleworth is the coolest African multi-millionaire ever! He deserves a freakin medal!
June 5th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
Ubuntu is great and Dapper Drake makes it even better!
I upgraded to Dapper and was pleasantly surprised to find that my system is much more responsive than with Breezy. Firefox seems especially snappier. I really like the new GNOME deskbar applet too.
June 6th, 2006 at 3:20 am
Same thing - I’ve been using it on my work laptop for two months before official Dapper release - not a single problem with it, just about everything I need. I installed package kubuntu-desktop to see KDE in action on Ubuntu and it didn’t even broke my Ubuntu installation! So now I have hybrid of Ubuntu and Kubuntu and I can easily switch between KDE and GNOME (although KDE is using too many resources and I’ve got no time so far to tweak it). And yes, Mark IS crazy :-)