Ubuntu Linux?

On my post from earlier this week, Marc left a comment about Ubuntu Linux. To be honest, the name had always for some reason steered me away. Not that I have any problems with tribal themes, but I guess I had some kind of strange irrational attachment to SuSE Linux, which is still just a slight bit away from being what I can transition to.

I decided to take a look at Ubuntu. As a Windows user, I've heard Mac users talk about how their system "just works", and I was curious to see that statement on Ubuntu's page. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I began downloading the iso image. I burned it, brought it home and began installing it on my "combat laptop". A friend and former coworker of mine had taken a contracting position in Iraq and took this laptop with him. It had already survived being dropped. While there, he made enough money to buy a nice new laptop, so upon his return and learning that I'm attending U of Phoenix, which he graduated from, he let me have it. My old Toshiba Pentium II laptop just couldn't keep up. He also gave me an iMac G3 that has become sort of a toy to me. I've upgraded it to OS 9.2.2 and Office 98 for Mac. It's still a little slow and underpowered, but I use it for surfing while my main laptop is busy. Anyway, since this Pentium III Compaq laptop was given to me (I got a new one for Christmas), had survived a combat zone, and lots of abuse in it's life, I call it my Combat Laptop. I figure it will make a nice test bed.

The first thing I noticed when I put the Ubuntu CD in is that it came up in Gnome. At first, I thought I downloaded the wrong CD, but I saw an install icon on the desktop. At present, it is going very slow, so I went to have a look at the page. I'm impressed with the download page. It's laid out very well with only the current version in i386, Power PC, and x64. I scrolled down a little farther, and found alternate configurations. I read and realized that the image I was downloading was for machines with at least 192 megs of RAM. My combat laptop has about 180, so I'm downloading the image for machines with less than 192 megs, as well as the PPC image for machines under 192 megs (mt iMac only has 32).

I'll burn them tonight after I get home from church, and hopefully I'll have some time to play with them this weekend. Thanks, Marc for suggesting Ubuntu.