Thinking of moving from RH to Ubuntu 10.04, what is your opinion?
 

I'm thinking of moving from an older RH install and Centos 2.6 on two different machines to Ubuntu 10.04.

what do y'all think of this distro / version?
Good?
Bad?
Ugly?
what is missing?
Gotcha's?

To be honest, it is kind of hard to give advice since you don't say how the machines are used. However, I don't know that it makes much difference. By and large, Linux is Linux. Given how old your original installs are, moving to ANY modern distro is likely to be an improvement, provided the hardware can hack it. So really the question is, are you comfortable with Ubutnu?

Welcome to LQ!! (You made it for almost 3 years without posting.....;) )

There are many good choices. Ubuntu is certainly popular, but I personally do not like some of the things they do.

Take a look at http://distrowatch.com One common advice is to pick anything in the top ten on their "hit list".

If you've been using an "older" RH install (I'm guessing you mean Red Hat Linux, in which case any currently existing install would count as an older install) and CentOS 2.6 then I suppose you're not the kind of user who updates often in order to get new features. I'd suggest waiting for RHEL 6 (CentOS 6) to appear and switch to that.

yup a 3 year lurker :)

Tx for the feedback

Only if you really like RedHat and its progeny......

Hi Broken,
thanks for the note.

A little more history:

I actually "like" RH, and use it daily for work, but I'm trying to find a way to convince my youngest son (26 years old) who is a Winblows addict to convert. He's a tech support guy at an office supply store that is a "staple" and well known household name ;) All he knows is Winblows, and I feel it is my duty as a father to show him a better way.

So I'm trying to convert him using a "beginers Linux" distro, that is easy to install, works out of the box, has a Winblows GUI feel and is dependable.

Of course, if he misses the BSOD I can show him how to write a cron job which will cause random program crashes, and or system reboots.

cheers
~hc

So far I'm thinking Ubuntu..

.. Ubuntu..

.. still Ubuntu..
.. Ubuntu..
Oah. Hold on. For a minute there I thought you were looking for Ubuntu ;)

Since you are familiar with distributions belonging to the RedHat mafia^W family, such a distribution would be a good choice because you'd be able to easily provide assistance should assistance be needed. I wouldn't introduce him to Fedora though. The chance of stuff breaking is high.. and you'll probably regret the decision every time he decides to upgrade to the next release.

Nowadays Arch Linux is the distribution to use. I'd recommend it only if you're willing to perform the install for him.

Mandriva.

Descended from redhat, has almost identical architecture, works out of the box, is easy to use, well polished.

Why change what works?

WOW!!
Even though it is my current favorite, I avoid recommending it to anyone who has never set up--or worked on-- a Linux system.

Also, I'm sure you realize that there are a few folk out there that disagree with such a categorical statement.

The key being that hockeycoach would be doing all the setting-up, his son would only be doing the.. using.

agreed, but how long before son wants to install SW and needs to know pacman?

How about a periodic update which results in the famous Arch "remove some packages before the update will work" dance?

The point? I have not found Arch to be a "set and forget" distro.

PCLinuxOS is my recommendation. It's descended from Redhat via Mandriva and is as stable and polished as Mandy i would say, but makes packages like Skype more easily available. Dropbox is even included by default!

The 2010 release really is a bit special imho. KDE has a bit of a windoze feel to it as well for the recently unplugged.

Whoa, let's back the truck up a bit.

Yes I will be doing the initial setup of Ubuntu (or some other distro), on one of my older P4 machines, then showing it off to him.

But my ultimate goal is to convert my Winblows son to see how easy it is to install, setup, use, upgrade and debug Linux based systems.

I just don't see that happening with RH5, as much as I love it, I don't think he'll share the love.


Broken, implies that Ubuntu is not dependable...
Yikes!!
Why?

hmmmm
interesting,
I've heard good things about it too, easy install, seamless HW support.
hmmmm

"Never try to teach a pig to sing---it wastes your time, and annoys the pig."

Getting anyone to switch operating systems is a fragile concept---I don't even try. Just down the hall is a colleague with a killer system: RHEL + Parallels + WinXP. All this on 3--yes THREE-- 24" monitors. Just one small problem--it doesn't work. It relates to a known issue, so I'm sure that there will be a solution but--in the meantime--I'm glad that I never tried to convert him.
Other people here are happily running RHEL systems with various math tools (system modelling), and seem to never have issues.

I **did** convert my wife, but that was easy:
She has used Linux exclusively for many years now....

Don't expect easy wireless setup on Mandriva. Don't get me wrong i'm using Mandriva at the moment, and I really like it, but setting up wireless was a complete pain in the ****.

Also if you do go for it, when the installer asks you if you want to remove unneeded modules after autoprobing, say no. If you let it it will remove all sorts of important modules including wireless ones. A massive ballsup from the Mandy team in the 2010 release.

I think that depends on the wireless card you have. I've had Mandriva instantly pick up wireless and use it correctly and immediately.

On my workstation, I only have a wired connection and I have never had a problem getting it to work - even after major system changes (new mobo, with integrated ethernet adapter...)

Well i'm using a common intel (4695 Kedron??) one, and the only way I could get decent performance (after I had reinstalled because of the autoprobe/module removal bug) was by installing wicd from the PLF repo (not included in the MandyOne repos). The default network manager applet thing was useless for me. The only time i can remember having more problems from a modern distro was with Slackware 12.

It is worth the hassel though imho :), now its up and running it is a lovely polished desktop, a really nice KDE i think. But, for the purposes of the OP I just think it's worth being prepared for a bit of effort up front. A lot of windoze/mac bods simply will not even attempt to use an OS that doesn't have perfect wireless OOTB.

Because ubuntu's approach is to prioritise the latest wizzy stuff ahead of stability and they have committed to a six-monthly release cycle which apparently doesn't always leave enough resources available for testing and debugging.