I had never heard of this distro until a friend told me about it. I saw it was #1 with distro watch. It is a position well earned. I had used SUSE,Fedora and Knoppix before, and had so-so results. I installed it on two computers and it installed nearly perfectly. The install isn't as pretty looking as Fedora or SUSE, but it did a MUCH BETTER job of correctly detecting my hardware for both machines. It would be nice if they had some type of sound test and internet test during install. My biggest complaint with the install was that it didn't by default install the NVIDIA graphics drivers. The generic ones are very slow and had repaint problems. Upgrading them however was much easier then on other distros. I just used Synaptic.

Once install is finished this is where Ubuntu blows everyone else away. Gnome is the default desktop.(Use kubuntu if you like KDE better) By default it installs the highest quality and popular linux apps. (Firefox,OpenOffice, and etc). I don't like the color scheme, but it is easy to change. The attention to detail is impressive. For example I wanted to share a folder using samba. I got a prompt telling me I needed to install Samba, and I typed in my password and it installed it for me. Really cool. They have tons poplular apps you can install/uninstall just by checking a box. I have never had a problem with this not working. I like the desktop sharing system then on Windows XP where it kicks you out of the desktop when someone else tries to login in.

Weaknesses:
The biggest weakness I found was video playback. They use 'Totem' as the default player. It had trouble playing avi or quicktime files. After some fiddling/hacking I got it to work, but this needs to be improved. Also it doesn't include FireFox 1.5 which is a big upgrade IMO from 1.0. The next version of Ubuntu will.

This is the first linux distro I feel comfortable installing on non-technical peoples machines especially in a business enviroment where people need email, web, and an office suite.

I have a linux wanderlust that won't let me keep just on distribution, but I keep going back to Ubuntu because I can just get it to work. It requires some tweaking and after adding "Automatix" it found all the packages that had legal issues and installed flawlessly. Found the unsupported repositories for java, gnome and a few other apps and am able to keep up-to-date on a very stable distro. Don't know why people have problems with the default desktop, I find the brown desktop very relaxing after experiencing the "blue screen of death" on every windows system I used.

The Starter guide is fanatastic, you just have to pay attention to what you do. Newer packages become available all the time and you have to make sure you point at the one you downloaded not the one on the example.

I was able to install the beta gaim, frostwire (instead of the non-free limewire), the latest java, and a lot of other things that I have trouble with in other distros.

I still have the wanderlust, so will continue to be testingn other distros and tweaking them, but will continue to keep my ubuntu and when dapper is fixed will probably upgrade.

I haven't used Linux in ages and recently picked up a t-30 Thinkpad and wanted to give it a shot. I decided on Ubuntu as I wanted a distro that would give me the fewest headaches to get up and running. It loaded fine. Installed fine. Wireless, power, everything is working as its supposed with no tweaking at all.

My only hangup was putting debian in the apt source list to get php5. After a bit I realised this was my problem and as soon as I got rid of the debian lines and updated everything was back to normal. So I guess its php4 for now (I did try different methods people posted about getting php5 up and running, but got lots of dephell so I will just wait until its supported)

I would only recommend this for a new user...like myself. It's a great newbie start, the shell works with some DOS friendly commands, however getting it to recognize my ATI Radeon 7000 card was a pain...it would not go above a 640x480 res. So the desktop looked like crap.
It didn't dawn on me until I was working with it, that there is no root user. If you want to execute something with root power...you have to use sudo ever damn time. If you try to just use 'su' it says permission denied. What kind of crap is that? Latest problems I'm having with it is that it stopped running Synaptic. It won't let me run any updater. Oh well. It's a nice start.

On a Compaq Presario 5000, P3 i686... I don't remember anything else and I am too lazy tpo look around but this is a really old box...

This distro is so good that even a hairy monkey can install it on his/her computer without a trouble [With apologies to hairy monkeys.] Install is text based but all questions are easy to answer. It takes about 30 minutes total after which you will end up with a superuser account (one with root's priviledges) and a root account with unknown password. That is easily solvable and I wont get into that... I never use distros being tested and I waited for the stable 5.10 breezy badger to be available. Once I finished installing connecting to the Internet was easy (I use dial-up) [ System -> Administration -> Networking and you can take it from there ] Immediately I decided to update my OS with synaptic but in order to do that I had to enable all repositories. I have read all about it on the web but I believe that it is simpler if you do: Synaptic [Enter the superuser password] --> Settings --> Repositories --> Settings --> click on "Show disabled software sources" and then proceed to click on the unchecked boxes... Also, Settings --> Repositories --> Click on add and proceed to enable the multiverse and the remaining disabled repositories... That is all I did and now I am able to play with tons of software... OK, now that that has been done I bet that a update manager warning will pop telling you that new updates are available. Well, in that case close your synaptic and all apps that are open and then simply click on the update manager to allow it to download the updates. This seems to be another front end for synaptic but works just as well... In total I had about 80 MB of updates which isn't terrible when you compare the 500 MB of updates in Fedora Core 4 [I love Fedora by the way...] Cool, huh?

Now, what's next? Ah! As usual some plugins need to be installed and I did that by following the indications of the Linux Format 76 (LXF 76) magazine [Not that I am adicted to Linux magazines but I have about 25 and around 15 linux books...] The java plugin from the repos is older and I wanted to have the absolute best. In regards to flash plugins I pretty much followed the instructions in the cited LXF 76. For acrobat reader I used synaptic to install acroread, mozilla-acroread and acroread-plugins... Easy... There are some instructions on how to upgrade to the newest Firefox browser around... Just google them cuz I already forgot how to do that... Cool thing is that Firefox 1.5 is just bang-up and much faster than the version Ubuntu comes with... I wonder why they didn't include Thunderbird 1.5 in the distro...

Okidoki! Other packages I installed via synaptic include: gnomebaker, mplayer and deborphan. I used deborphan to get rid of those packages that had no dependencies and that were hanging around with no purpose... It is quite easy to work with this...

Oh! I also downloaded firestarter because Ubuntu doesn't have a firewall and I really needed to improve the security of my system... Hmmm... What else? Yes, the disk that I had came with Linux i386 kernel version so I had to install Linux i686 via synaptic [ Don't you love synaptic? ]

Performance wise I have not done any tewaking on my OS but from what I have seen cpu resources are used conservatively and my system has never slowed down... I am happy with Ubuntu...

One week experience ;-) Got a new Pentium D so I set my mind on a new distro. Been on Fedora before, wouldn't install however on the dual core.
Ubuntu did, however my only copy was a CD with a single core version. Nevertheless able to smoothly upgrade to SMP (manually btw cos I hadn't figured out the apt-get feature).
Another thing that I had to manually upgrade was OpenOffice -- the Ubuntu-specific version crashed with every move I made, so I got my 2.02 version from openoffice.org -- after downloading a decent set of fonts I am able to work satisfactory (well...).
sudo is a bit tiring but I got a good tip to install in expert mode -- there you can choose root as user.
For the rest: so far so good ;-)

Overall i was very impressed switching to ubuntu from Suse 10. I like the Gnome interface a lot better and the package management with Ubuntu is killer. There were a lot of updates to install after the first bootup but i think i can say Suse 10 or even 9.3 for that matter had about double as much as ubuntu did so im not complaining.

I did some research on installing my Nvidia drivers before installing the OS and came across this forum.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=25723

After following those instructions my card worked like a charm.

I also browsed to

http://easylinux.info/wiki/Ubuntu

Which helped me and guided me with installing some of my favorite applicaitons i used in KDE.

Hardware detection was great the only thing it didnt detect is my Wifi and TV tuner card but i dont use either of them so i was happy. I would definatly reccommend this OS to anyone.

I can't imagine using any other distro for my desktop. I hate having to use sudo, but I've found ways around it. I put together a 64bit system and tried to put Fedora Core 4 x86_64 on it, but it just did not like my hardware. I wasn't about to go through a whole bunch of crap just so I could use fedora. I popped in the Breezy64 CD and it worked like magic, though during the install I had to turn acpi off and I still don't have it. This is really no problem though because I never turn it off. It really is the best distro linux has to offer if you think that a computer is a means to an end rather than an end itself.

WHOA! I have tried over 13 distros in the last two weeks. None work like Ubuntu!

It is so simple, so elegant, so NOOB FRIENDLY! Get Ubuntu... NOW! I love it so much. After Fedora, this is sooooooooo simple.

Updates with one click! WiFi? No problems! Hardware detection? B-E-A-UTIFUL! I installed it one a new desktop and an old laptop, it is extremely verstile. RECOMENDED, you need to get it!

THis is the most awesome distribution I have ever used. This is my second used distro since the 5.04 release.

Here is a few things to note. Someone, on the ubunt forums said that ubuntu is not good with notebooks and laptops. SUre, whatever you say. That is why the ATI Rage mobility PM AGP 2x worked right away, the wireless worked easily, and it used the extra buttons it had(volume, etc). I still don't understand how it did it. The only things that didn't work was the question mark button, and the person button. Oh yeah, and the "pause" and "play" buttons.

I got it installed right after I got the CD's, since the burned ones never could get past the step after partitioning.

SO, I get it started, and all is good. THe wireless started, updates got done(when I told it so!), etc. I was very happy with the look. The GNOME look is better then KDE by far, in my standards.

--
Desktop:
Now, I did have just a bit of trouble on the desktop. Now, everything worked, I needed to install the video card drivers(ATi) and the wireless drivers. I took it as if ubuntu needs to know about PCI wireless. So I got ndiswrapper, and the ati proprietary drivers. DONE!

Well, what do you know, everything worked like it was supposed to. No problems.

One problem on both I did notice, was that on some guides that told me to go to a certain file in a path, that path was true, but the file(s) never did exist. What are these people, idiots?

One thing, I did NOT ever have to use "sudo" all the time. I typed su , the password, and that was it!

I use Solaris at work (networking OSS software consultant) & have played with MAndrake distro's for personal use before now.

I was impressed it was totally free (download not too bad if you have a half decent speed ADSL line) & the installation was very easy (I'm a ksh & applications expert NOT a sysadmin) - chose defaults for most things & it worked fine.

I hadn't experienced Debian before but apt-get is excellent.

I have no problems with Gnome & after a few downloads & some simple customisation it's very usable. Haven't re-installed on the target machine yet (Mini-ITX board with SATA disc) so maybe that will cause problems.

Just waiting for next release now!

I tried breezy badger on my way over to arch or slackware (haven't decided yet) from mandriva le2005. It was so good I decided to stay for a bit longer, I need to learn more anyways.

The install took a long time (compared to arch, debian) and there was no option of picking what you want. I want a slim system, that is not to say badger is bloated, it is not, and the packages chosen are good choices.

Gnome is also excellent, no matter if Linus disapproves of it. Nautilus is fairly quick and has a nice interface. Looks and system is better integrated than kde is IMO. I thought I prefered the slimmer enlightenment or fluxbox, but with gnome on dapper it's impossible to dismiss the desktop environments (as opposed to the window managers)altogether.

Apart from some repositories not working everything worked just like it should and there is only one bug I found. For it is a big one though and for many others as well as it is the SCIM input system for asian languages. I looked for an answer to why it didnt work for many hours until I found out that you had to build it yourself OR downgrade to hoary or upgrade to dapper beta. Fine I thought, let's build it. Halfway through theres a big error. So I update to Dapper. When the philosophy is rooted in that everyone should get it in their own language should a fix be applied for SCIM?

Well, this is a different story, but Dapper beta is nothing short of amazing and after running two days nonstop I've had nothing but good experiences with it. Its much fresher also!

For the new users Ubuntu is the most friendly I have tried yet. I can't think of anything more I could want really. It's very easy with apt-get and all and its more easy to learn linux with than mandriva with kde was.

I give it 7 out of ten because dapper is quite the upgrade, nothing except SCIM was wrong, but dapper does it better. I can see xpers emigrating in big numbers when final is out.

Oh and you have to go sudo bash instead of su to (act) as root. Confused me at first.

Actually I rounded up a 9.9 to to a 10.

This version of Ubuntu, Gnome, software package management (synaptic, apt-get), software package repository, and documentation/support are absolutely phenomenol! Its a real turning point for Linux on the Desktop.

I resized the pre-installed anti-competitive Windows XP using the Ubuntu installer, and it went flawlessly. It even had a recommended resize for me on install. I now have Ubuntu and XP dualbooting on this laptop with no problems, which I find amazing.

All hardware was detected and installed (except my broadcom wireless, which is normal for broadcom), so I did have to use ndiswrapper for my wireless card (it has worked flawlessly), which was easy to setup following the online ubuntuforum.com docs.

Sharing files with windows, browsing windows shares, and using windows shared printers is pretty seemless.

Cons (Very minor, easily fixed):
grub vs lilo: lilo support is flaky for some reason on a few of the installs, so use grub.
sudo, which I hate to use, is easily bypassed by doing: sudo passwd
Also install a good .vimrc file or you get no syntax highliting in vim, unless you don't use vim, then its not a problem.

No distribution is going to make everybody happy. And it's no fun when a fresh GNU/Linux install doesn't even play an .mp3 file.

I won't try to write up an entire review of Ubuntu. I'll just say these few things.

1. A distribution's forums should be informative and friendly (we all panic from time to time). Ubuntu's forums were made with human kindness in mind.

2. In the forums you'll find reference to Automatix, a script that will help complete your Ubuntu setup. Automatix helped make my PC usable.

3. Synaptic/apt-get sweeten the deal. Need software? There it is.

Let's keep in mind that Warty Warthog (version 4.10), Hoary Hedgehog (5.04) and Breezy Badger (5.10) are beta versions for the full release that's coming soon: Dapper Drake (6.06). Bugs? Sure. But the bug stomping is going strong.

BTW: the price for Ubuntu will always be "free". A free D/L or CD. That's the deal.