YAL

Yet Another Linux! A lot of people are raving about the new desktop Linux package Ubuntu: Linux for Human Beings. Read this praise from Russell Beattie. They will even mail you free CDs that allow you to enjoy Linux from boot without touching your existing system. Device support and simplicity is supposed to be the best of any distro. I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but Ubuntu is definitely causing a lot of excitement.

Comments

[Brian Glass]

I'll confirm the coolness of Ubuntu. I had been a Mandrake users for several years before I tried out Ubuntu and now I'm an Ubuntu fanatic and have converted at both work and home.

It just plain works, is easy to use, and is amazingly fast (much more responsive than Mandrake - in both Gnome and KDE), and apt is the best.

The main difficulty (which isn't really that difficult) is installing the non-free codecs from Multiverse for viewing of video (and audio) encoded with proprietary encoders (e.g. mp3). In order to be free (as in freedom) they can't include this stuff in the main repositories.

[phil crissman]

Ubuntu is definitely pretty slick; I have a review of my experience with it up on my site.

You mention device support and simplicity; device support is pretty standard across the Linux world. It's all the same kernel, after all. What makes the difference is the simplicity that you speak of, which Ubuntu has in spades. Any Linux distro can support everything that Ubuntu does -- the main difference is that Ubuntu does it for you. I wouldn't say that Ubuntu *is* the best, but it's certainly *among* the best.

It's been awhile since I wrote that review, but I gave it "5 out of 5" at the time, so apparently I was impressed. I didn't keep it installed, though, because I wanted to test Arch Linux (which is extremely cool, I am profoundly impressed -- which is saying quite a bit, for a Gentoo user).

For Debian fans looking for an easy install, and for Linux beginners, I'd say Ubuntu is a winner.