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?