StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I'm no stranger to Linux in general (I work with Linux servers on a day to day basis), but I've only tried a few of the available distros. I've used Mandriva LE 2005, and didn't like it that much. I've used Redhat and Fedora Core, and found them both nice, but BLLOOOOOATED as hell. I work with Debian the most, and therefore it's become my favorite, but it's got a much, much sharper learning curve than most other distros. Good for servers, though.

I recently got an older laptop that refused to take Windows anymore. I tried installing Win2k, XP Home, XP Pro, and they just flat-out would not work. I was going to slap Debian on there, but Debian on a laptop is kinda annoying, especially if you want to get wireless set up. On a lark, I snagged Ubuntu 5.10.

Installation was familar enough; it was a simplified Debian installer. Everything went smoothly, and now that I've had a bit to poke around, I think I can say that Ubuntu makes an excellent desktop/laptop Linux distro. Why, you ask? Well, here are a few reasons:

• -A minimum of services installed - you get cron, at, cupsys, syslog, klog, and that's about it. I installed SSH too, but that's just because I likes it.
  -Root is disabled! The best thing about this distro, I think, is that root is disabled and you administer the computer via sudo. From what I can tell, sudo has been sensibly configured. It seems like it'll be reasonably difficult for a n00b to fuck everything up, unless you happen to type sudo rm -rf / or something like that.
  -Wireless was easy! The onboard wireless adapter was correctly identified during install, and it was a matter of supplying my wireless router's info, key, and activating the adapter.
  -Sensible software choices - They kept the bloat to a minimum. You get Firefox, Gaim, OO.o, Evolution, and, of course, Gnome as a desktop. There's not as much software as debian, but Ubuntu uses Debian's apt system, which I really like. If you really want something, you can always just compile the source, I suppose.

Of course, there are a few cons for self-styled powerusers like myself...

• -The root account is disabled! This was a shocker for me. But it's just a matter of sudo passwd root and you can vim the /etc directory to your heart's content.
  -The polishing of the installation and configuration comes at expense of supreme customizability of other distros (like Debian), Of course, you can get away with a simple base install if you want, but if you're a fan of a zillion options, especially if you want to build a server, Ubuntu probably isn't the best choice

In all, though, there really aren't a lot of problems with the distro. It makes for an excellent desktop-oriented OS, the software is thoughtfully chosen and by no means excessive, and a vanilla configuration is reasonably secure. Plus, wireless seems very easy to set up (NOTE: I only have WEP on this laptop, so I can't speak for setting up WPA/WPA2 wireless.). If you're one of those who abhors the idea of upgrading to Vista and you have an extra machine to try it out, I'd recommend Ubuntu wholheartedly.

I tried Ubuntu awhile back but there have been persistant problems with the Cisco Aironet 350 PCMCIA WLAN card and the 2.6 kernel - I wonder if its been fixed?

From what I can glean from searching the forums, it's supported, but issues w/ WPA- you have to patch the drivers: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=52835

Also using Ubuntu on work server- lot more stable than Debian stable + pinned testing/unstable packages.

Funny thing is, I've been thinking about installing this now after messing with SUSE 10.0 and finding it to now cack up with media thanks to my ATI card I believe.

Guess Ubuntu is it then.