Alright I made it to the desktop in Ubuntu v9.04 desktop. Yay!!! /happy-dance
The update manager is showing a large number of updates for me. So I click the Install Updates button and... /bonk
I don't have the root password! LOL

was just wondering if i could make a suggestion. as far as distros go ( and i am like you in that i am NOT an expert) I have moderate success with fedora 12. the cpu your using looks like it could be the old 32bit only p4 like mine is in the other box. so you may not have to look into the whole 64 vs 32 debate. anyways, back to what i was saying: fedora and debian have both been kind to me. i guess by kind i mean : install is straight forward, large repo of software to try out, easy to get used package managers, multiple place to get free support ( LQ. ect..). I really think you might be more satisfied going with a more in-depth ditro. not ubuntu isn't, but i think i saw somewhere in this post ( b4 the digression) that you had already had some experience. while the learning curve with linux in general may seem to be steep>>>you always go faster on steep hill when your skating. i have a feeling you'll end up moving to something that's more of a solid base ( fedora/ debian ) that's already being used in production.
environments.
(braces self for full blown flamerizing) fedora and debian from my experiance ( friends that use it in production ) are used more than Ubuntu ( which many of them to view as a novelty ) I have no idea why. being that ubuntu is based on debian>> why not just get as close to vanilla as you can while getting a ton of software to choose from AND get hands on experience with a stable and widely used distro. ubuntu has tons of little things in the background that you may not run into in the workplace i THINK.

any one else smell that?

I ran with Ubuntu v9.04 because the reviewer at Tom's Hardware was running it before he went through the review process of v9.10 desktop. He eventually went back to v9.04 desktop because it was much more stable. Similar sentiments about v9.04 being very stable are echoed in other reviews and in forums. I would rather get my feet wet with a cooked distro of Linux than roll on the rocks of Debian in the raw... at least for my first go 'round. However, while installing Ubuntu v9.04 on my P4PE box (32bit P4 CPU installed), I was downloading Debian, Knoppix, and Mepis.

I quite enjoy 9.04 although I prefer Slackware. It has a definite spot on my laptop for work. And on the "family computer" that my wife and kids use, Ubuntu is a nice choice, and if run with fluxbox instead of Gnome it can actually be quite quick on old hardware.

cool. did you get passed the no root thing? that was one of the things that drove me nuts with ubuntu.Slackware was actually the first distro i used. i changed due to never being able to get all deps together for multimedia stuff. learned a crap load real fast with it though. and got lots of help along the way.


EDIT:@OPoster> try this if you still dont know your root passwrd
Press ESC at the grub prompt.

Press e for edit.

Highlight the line that begins kernel ………, press e

Go to the very end of the line, add rw init=/bin/bash

press enter, then press b to boot your system.

Your system will boot up to a passwordless root shell.

Type in passwd username

All you have to do to enable root logins is to set a root password. To enable graphical root logins, you then set it kdmrc/gdm.conf and again in the login window setting under "administration" It's a pain that you have to do that, and Ubuntu people always act like you are asking how to cut your nose off when you ask, but once you know how to do it, it's really quite trivial.

There is no need for a root password in Ubuntu. Just use your "regular" user password when prompted, and "sudo" if you need root privileges from the command line.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RootSudo
http://xkcd.com/149/

I agree 9.04 was a pretty decent Ubuntu release. The only 2 drawbacks IMHO are: 1) All the software is about 1 year out of date; 2) support will end in October.

Distribution popularity, no matter which technical forum or blog you read, is nearly always one of the topics asked about. There should be no wonder or surprise about this. The availability of such a great number of choices alone is the primary reason this happens, and one reason it continues is that there is never a strong consensus of opinion about any of it. Let's get that clear immediately - what is the best distribution is always a matter of opinion. When you further qualify the statement and the conditions, that narrows it somewhat, but ultimately it still involves opinion, but as you categorize what you are looking for in a system - a server, a desktop, a general purpose system, easy, flexible, very stable, or the very latest software instead? These kinds of questions can isolate the appropriate systems somewhat, but even with a smaller list, the answers are still full of opinion.

Ubuntu is popular for a number of reasons. One is that it is one of the few efforts that actually has a marketing budget. Limited in size compared to Microsoft's marketing budget, it is still a few million dollars stronger than most, if not all, Linux based distributions. The fact that Ubuntu is based on Debian helps. The core, because of that, is rock solid. Some people like the fact that every six months you know that there is a release available. Those who want the latest software can follow those releases, but they do tend to be fairly volatile, and for some people, that means an increased chance of encountering problems. Sometimes one version works and another doesn't.

Distributions like Slackware, Debian, SimplyMEPIS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and a few other conservative releases tend to lag the latest, most current software, but in return, they reward you with a very stable environment on which to base your desktop or server configuration.

My comments alone suggest that while Ubuntu COULD be a good choice for some people, so could other alternatives. Deciding what features and attributes are the most important for your needs and purpose will at least help you narrow down the list.

Trying out either Live CD based systems and/or creating a Virtualization server environment (using Virtualbox, VMware, QEMU, or some other "Hypervisor" technology) is a good way to try out a lot of alternatives in a fairly short amount of time using a moderate amount of resources with a relatively low associated level of risk. I think that is one good way to personally evaluate a lot of systems to come out with your own short list of "best systems". The Long Term Support (LTS) versions of Ubuntu could make it on that list since they are neither as risky nor as volatile as the other regularly released versions of Ubuntu that come out twice a year.

Just talking about personal favorites for a moment, my own highly opinionated and PERSONAL favorites have one thing in common - a Debian base. My favorites come from 1. A Debian Stable core: SimplyMEPIS and Debian Stable (right now Lenny), 2. A Debian Testing core: antiX and Debian Testing (currently Squeeze), and 3. A cutting edge Debian Unstable core: sidux and Debian Sid.

Most Popular? Ubuntu?
 

I've got Ubuntu 9.10 here on a flash stick and use it sometimes on my netbook. While it looks ok and configured nicely, I can't brag about it to anyone. I can and do brag about the Puppy Linux distros, especially ShepherdPup and the Acer Remix, which are based on latest releases of that distro. I find that they, while having the ever-present hazard of running in root, are still a vastly superior replacement for windoze. Shoot....if that's so big a problem for linux newbies and others, one can always get the multi-user version released recently. They are also more likely to run on a variety of systems than ubuntu, especially considering the failures of latest releases. That said, I abandoned Puppy on my netbook a few days ago and put Debian 5.04 on it, between the Windoze & DesktopBSD partitions. My desktop also now sports the aforementioned puppies, along with Debian & DesktopBSD, making both systems rather easy to use. Where then, does that leave Slackware? Well, I'm not installing it on these systems at this time, and probably not in the future. While I have absolute faith in slacks' reliability and rock-solid nature, I'm currently more interested in showing others easier-to-install/use versions of linux. This is also the reason I haven't installed any FreeBSD or Slackware on my systems in a number of years. My next desktop machine, preferably a tower, will most certainly have slackware on it, as I'm most familiar with it, having fooled with it, along with freebsd, since the early or mid-90's. My family is seriously challenged with a point/click interface, so why scare them off with all this stuff they don't want to learn. As always, everyone's mileage varies on this, and I hope to try out my old friend again in the near future. Slackware users are, indeed, in the small minority, and I suspect this is due to the fact that most folks want to claim some kind of "hacker" status without really having to learn how to do so. I just want folks to migrate from buggy, overpriced bloatware! Even a live distro is preferable to that. Thanks for this great forum!

73 de Mike