Been playing around with Ubuntu Hoary (stupid name) and have to say it's not too shabby. Installed no problem, detecting everything on my laptop without a hitch and runs pretty smoothly.

Pretty much Debian but with fresher packages and some decent tools. Enough to make things convenient without really getting in the way. I'm not a big fan of automatic configuration tools, main reason I've been using Slack, but have to say that so far it seems to be well thought out and ok.

It comes with the newest Gnome and without KDE so I installed KDE just to see how that does. Installed the newest KDE release with no problems at all. Still using the Gnome but choice is good. Seems nice.

I'll see how it does after an update or two, when they become available. Over all I have to say I'm fairly impressed.

cool, good to know.

that would be the install, not the live cd, right?

titanium_geek

Yeah, the install.

hmmm. thinking of trying it out.

i tried out warty and it was great apart from having gnome as default and of course the odd problem here and there. I'll probably wait a few more releases before i give ubuntu another try i mean its only on its second release, which is very impressive and its at the top of distrowatch. I see only good for ubuntu and it has defiantly got potential and it could finally be the perfect link for windows users to get across to linux

one cd is definitly impressive. Reminiscent of the win98 one cd, which is a good friendly thing for first timers.
Hey, suggestion for the next version name- they have an adjective ending in y and a noun ending in 'hog' that alliterate, so, Greasy Groundhog.

titanium_geek

I agree with masonm: Hoary isn't too shabby.

Slack is definitely superior, but I have to give credit where credit is due. The Ubuntu developers deserve one hell of a pat on the back for unleashing such an easy-to-use beast. Thanks to their efforts, several people that I know personally have migrated to Linux – and actually feel comfortable about it.

Now if only they could design an installer that enables you to choose which pakages you want to install, instead of installing everything on the disc.

Ubuntu is EXACTLY what Linux needs to grab the windoze/mac horde. I tried the other alleged 'newbie distro' - Mandrake, and almost gave up on Linux after 3 weeks of frustration.

Luckily, just before I rebooted 'les Fenetres', I tried Ubuntu Warty and am now hooked on Linux. I'm starting to try to convert my friends now (both of them). Waiting impatiently for the Hoary CD.

Hey, redazz, how many of the programs didn't you want, there's only about a dozen on the CD. Although a decent CD/DVD burner app wouldn't raise many objections.

Mandrake is not really a newbie distro, though many newbies may find it easy. I think its in the same league as Suse and Fedora.

Anyway as for Ubuntu, I didn't want to install gnomemeeting, gnome-btdownload, openoffice, vnc server and a few other packages. The only problem is that when you remove one of the packages, you also have to uninstall ubuntu-desktop. I don't know why its this way. I am going to try Kubuntu later on today, maybe I'll find it better since I am used to KDE.

Hell yeah

Maybe Happy Hamster? Seems just as dumb as the reast of the names they use.