and I'm impressed.

Installation was one of the easiest I've used, I chose the default installation and let it partition the drive the way it wanted to.

I'm not sure why this distro is any better than any of the other ones, can someone please tell me its advantages?

What makes a distro good to some people makes it just regular or even uninteresting to others. Ubuntu has a name for being a stable and increidbly easy to install distro. Something a complete n00b could do with his eyes closed. In addition it's based on Debian which is famous for being stable and secure.

What is 'the best' distro depends on what you want to do with it, how much flexibility you require, how much of a wiz-kid you are, what type of support you need/prefer, what hardware you use, whether you want 'bleeding edge' or 'thoroughly tested' and some other 100 factors I won't list to avoid becoming really boring.

Finally there's the random factor. What I mean is that the reason many people find distro X to be best is often because it was the first they tried or at least the first that installed without any problems and they have become used to it. Anything they try after that won't be as good unless things work the same way they're used to (which virtually never happens) or they see a significant over-all improvement (again, difficult).

If it works and it gives you what you need it is 'the best distro' ............. for you

thanks for the reply.

I wasnt asking what was the best distro, because I know it cant be answered as its down to personal preference and what you want to do with it.

However you have answered my question......stability seems to be ubuntos advantage as well as easy installation.

Stability? Not really. The first three weeks after Breezy's initial release, there were a host of problems--some still that haven't been resolved. Hoary was quite stable, but I wouldn't say Ubuntu's advantage is being stable.

Stability would be a Debian or Gentoo claim. Ubuntu--no. In fact, Ubuntu, as a matter of policy, builds itself off of Debian's unstable branch.

Ease of installation? No. That would go to Mepis or Mandriva... or even Fedora.

What sets Ubuntu apart?

1. It's always free in every way--not proprietary, not costly. It will always be free and there's no subscription that gets you more than the free version.

2. It's dedicated to having a new release every six months to the day.

3. It's designed to be simple--one application per task, so as not to confuse the new user. Applications are also named by task. So Rhythmbox isn't called Rhythmbox. It's called Rhythmbox Music Player.

4. The support at the Ubuntu Forums (http://www.ubuntuforums.org)--not the Ubuntu subforums on Linux Questions--is unparalleled for friendliness, responsiveness, and helpfulness.

I am with aysiu on this one. Suse, Mandriva and Fedora have a much better installation routine than Ubuntu (and so do a lot of other distros). As for stability, its also not Ubuntus greatest strength, because as mentioned earlier its based on Debian Unstable and sometimes uses bleeding edge packages that are likely to contain bugs. I think one of the greatest strengths (though I also consider it a weakness because I am a power user) is the minimalistic nature of the default installation. Its doesn't overwhelm newbies with lots of apps that do the same thing and makes the system immediately useable for production purposes.