Ooh Ooh Ubuntu!

I got a new notebook PC recently and had to make some hard decisions on which Linux distro to use (I dual boot with Windows and Linux). I have been through a couple of distros over the years including Red Hat, Lindows (I liked that name!), Mandrake, Fedora, before settling on SuSE for my desktop (I currently use Mandrake on servers). I intended to use Mandrake on the new notebook to match my servers. 5 minutes into the installation, Mandrake died. It appears Mandrake 2006 which I was using did not like the dual core CPUs. Tried again with another set of CDs to no avail. I had heard a lot about Ubuntu so thought would try that before going with SuSE (which has always
had good driver support).

Ooh Ooh Ubuntu was indeed my first reaction. And what a breath of fresh air this distro is. Installation was quick and painless and everything worked first go, including the wireless card and it also got the screen resolution (widescreen) right. For the first time I actually liked the Gnome desktop as well. Updating and adding software is a no brainer with the package manager, and the various repositories seem to have everything I suddenly need. Ubuntu 6.06 is definitely very very nice and I hope it continues being so with future releases. I am also thinking of installing an Ubuntu server now as well. I understand 6.10 will come with preset choices for things like mail servers (6.06 has a preset LAMP install only), which will make it easy for those new to Linux. I am also thinking of deploying Ubuntu on some of the desktops in the office as I think Linux in its Ubuntu form is nearly ready for the corporate world.